Abstract

Following stillbirth, post-mortem examination or autopsy may detect anomalies and reveal important information for counselling of parents. Imaging the stillborn baby using CT or MRI scanning is a less invasive option to an autopsy and may be a preferable choice for bereaved parents and clinicians. CT scanning has other advantages as the scans take less time and have fewer resource implications in most public hospitals. In this study, 14 parents gave consent to their stillborn infant having a CT scan after stillbirth in addition to the usual X-Ray examination; half of the cases also had a consented autopsy performed. Results from all tests were compared and showed that CT scans gave similar measurements and findings to autopsy, with some additional information given by the CT scans. The CT scans also offered high resolution 3-D images of the infants, with excellent pictures of anatomy and skeletal structures. More research is needed to look at improving the detail of the scan output as well as the possibility of taking samples of tissue at the time of the CT scan for more detailed investigation. CT scans have the potential to be an alternative to or an additional test alongside conventional autopsy in stillbirth.