A report on MSNBC this morning (31 March 05) stated that the Schindlers’ attorney said that they might challange the makeup of the autopsy team.
This might not be the right thread for this but I wonder if our attorneys (change the y to i and add es) are uneasy about the Schindlers’ lawyers continuing to milk this cow by filing appeals that they know won’t go anywhere and now threatening legal action over the autopsy.
In addition to actually conducting the legal proceedings are lawyers supposed to advise clients as to the likelihood of success in a legal action and advise against action if the chances are nil as seems to be the case in the last 6 or 7 actions of the Shindlers? I don’t know that their lawyers didn’t give such advice but at some point shouldn’t you just refuse to continue representing them?
I’m just glad it’s over. You can be uncomfortable about the issues surrounding this case while still wishing the poor woman’s body is let go. RIP, Terri.
Actually, if it hadn’t been for the media circus surrounding Terri’s death, odds are that there wouldn’t be an autopsy, since it’s well known why she died and she passed while in the care of a medical facility. Autopsies aren’t SOP in most deaths.
Someone posted a link to Florida law that requires an autopsy in case the body is to be cremated. It’s in one of the many Schiavo threads. I’m too damned lazy to look it up.
My sister, who has been following the Schiavo case much more closely than I have, says that Florida law requires that anyone who is going to be cremated must be autopsied first. So apparently, Michael Schaevo isn’t “allowing” the autopsy to happen, it is required by law.
You’re right, of course, I’d forgotten about that. However, if Terri had died from something other than having her feeding tube removed and Michael had agreed to her parent’s wishes and not wanted her cremated, but buried in Florida, then, an autopsy wouldn’t be mandated by law.
And that brings in the second reason. Schiavo wants on an autopsy in order to show that the amoung of brain damage was so complete as to make impossible any nervous system activity above mere involuntary reflexes such a breathing, heart beat, etc.
Call me cynical, but I have the feeling that if Yahweh himself showed up and said that Terri’s brain was too far gone for higher functions her parents wouldn’t believe it.
Actually, although I am not a Rad or a Rad tech, I support them by admining a PACS (picture archiving and communications system). PACS is basically a storage/retreival system for digital rad images, be they MRI, CT, flouro, etc. Think of a backend database/routing system with a photoshop-like viewer(although not that sophisticated, it can never permanantly alter the original image for instance)
In a PACS (from what I have seen all PACS’ have basically the same toolset) there is a tool called window/level. In our PACS there are some presets in there depending on what you are looking at. It is a matter of a click to select the “bone” or “brain” preset in a head CT for instance, or a “bone” or “tissue” click on a chest, and it enhances or de-emphisizes certian tissue types so the Doc can get a better look at what he wants to see, kinda like contrast on a monitor or the enhance filters in photoshop. It is set on an individual basis for modality/doc/facility.
So if a diagnosis is “possible fracture” the tech adjusts the level to more dense tissue (bone) if the DX is “RO stroke” they adjust for the softer tissue to find bleeds in the brain. That said, PACS is a newish technology, and I am sure not availible when Terri had her heart attack, but I think the techs still had an adjustment they could make on the old machines that did roughly the same thing.
Six months ago or so, by accident, when we were messing around with modalities and the presets. I ran across a CT-head that, when I played with the levels, I could get similar results to those 2 images, from the same study, of a healthy person (possible stroke, negative results).
The docs and techs around the boards can tell you more, I am a computer geek, not a rad tech, but those images could be the same person, with the window/level altered to emphasize/de-emphasize tissue, bone, or whatever. Or possibly a photoshop.
That said, I am glad that she is at peace. She should have been long ago.
And I will delete the next few paragraphs I have written about the selfishness/cluelessness of her parents and the conservatives, since this is not the pit.
What I find really sad is that she could not have had an “assisted suicide”. Instead, all concerned had to watch her die of thirst and starve to death for a week and a half. Maybe my opinion is cold and callous but wouldn’t this have been preferable to letting nature take its course? Then again, there would be a public outcry about the sanctity of life.
It has never been challenged by anything more than conjecture by those who have been determined to tear her husband down.
If it’s anything like it is around here, cases like this have to be referred to the medical examiner, who can then do an autopsy but can also decline to do so. We have to do this whenever a patient dies if he’s had a procedure of any kind in the last 24 hours; the ME usually declines the case immediately unless there’s a genuine question about the death.
In Schiavo’s case, there isn’t much medical uncertainty, at least among competent physicians who have actually seen and examined her. But, apparently, Michael Schiavo talked with the ME and they decided that an autopsy would be done in the hope that it brings closure for her parents and their supporters. (IMO, it won’t, but he has to do it anyway.)
Etherman–I don’t think you could come up with a scan quite like that one by messing with the PACS settings. The demarcations are fairly sharp, and I can’t imagine how you’d get a pattern like that just by adjusting the contrast settings. The pattern is consistent with what you would see after a huge anoxic injury.
The CT scan is not definitive, but it is highly suggestive, and taken as part of her larger picture–which includes flat EEGs, physical exam findings, and her clinical course–it is hard to get more conclusive.
The trouble with such conspiracy theories is that too many people are involved. The technician would have to falsify the output. The physicians would have to go into court and swear that these are true and correct images and so on. Why would any of these people do that. sheer perversity, or a bribe, or what?
It is always possible to conjure up some complicated means by which something could have been done.
