AIIMS soon to have odourless mortuary

The stinky mortuary at AIIMS will soon be a thing of the past as the premier medical institute is going to have an odourless, modern autopsy facility, a first-of-its-kind in the country, to help forensic experts conduct post-mortems with ease.
Tenders inviting interested firms have already been issued by the AIIMS authorities in this regard. The proposed facility would come up within the existing autopsy centre, head of the AIIMS forensic department, Dr Sudhir Gupta said.
"Generally, the mortuary where autopsies are conducted have repellent smells because of which the ambiance becomes unpleasant. Also, doctors and staff conducting post-mortems are unable to concentrate on the higher technical findings of the body as autopsies are being performed in haste.

"Besides, it is an unpleasant experience for relatives of the deceased as well as police investigators who have to remain present nearby," Gupta said.
In medico-legal cases, conducting an autopsy and concluding opinion is a major challenge for the experts who have to examine all organs and several tissues particularly in case of sudden unexplained deaths or deaths due to poisoning.
"In such cases, unique skill of the doctor and a good amount of time are required with full concentration to understand the various changes which occur in unexplained, unexpected deaths.

"In Western countries, they call it molecular autopsy where the doctors have to spent a considerable amount of time inside the mortuary to study tissues at microscopic level," he said.

Further, Gupta said that a mortuary is a vulnerable place to get infected because so many biological fluids and tissues come out during the process of autopsy.
"All that is required to be drained out in toto. In the newly constructed autopsy centre, all these fluids and other biological materials will get evacuated and cleaned by vacuum technique. At AIIMS, we are still using manual methods of cleaning and then throwing them in traditionally," he said.
He said the autopsy table will be wall-mounted like an operation table so that the height can be adjusted. Also, the centre will have in-built facilities for videographing a post-mortem procedure.