Post mortem observations

Attempts were also made to correlate clinical observations with the results of chemical analyses of the urine and its deposits and to post-mortem observations. No one was more successful in this field than Richard Bright working at Guy s Hospital in London with a team of young physicians and medical students.135-137 They studied the symptoms of kidney disease by clinical and chemical examinations and related their observations to post-mortem examination of the morbid kidney. Bright, whose work was published in 1825, was one of the first physicians to couple his hospital treatments systematically with chemical and physiological research directed towards precision in diagnosis and treatment.138... 

The main focus in carcinogenicity studies should be devoted to post mortem observations such as organ weights, macroscopic and microscopic observations. 

The post mortem observation of fracture surfaces of Izod bars confirms cavitational mode in the modified products. The close observation of the TEM pictures offers a further insight while cavities are sometimes visible inside the reactive modifier particles (R), the cavities in the blends containing non-reactive particles (NR) are always located at the modifier / matrix interface. 

Protocols for these studies are similar to those for studies of shorter duration, except that a minimum of 10-15 rodents/group and four non-rodents/sex/ group are required. Toxicokinetic measurements are still required. The usual in-life and post-mortem observations are performed. 

Figure 7.3. The upper ponion is a montage of photomicrographs of a typical Snake Hill femoral cortex, running from the periosteal (left) to the endosteal (right) surfaces. A dashed line connects the post-mortem crack seen on the gross specimen to the magnified crack in the montage. Letters mark the commonly observed layers A = very thin, well preserved periosteal layer B = cloudy, poorly preserved structures C = relatively well preserved midcortical bone D = poorly preserved endosteal layer. Preservation" in this context refers to visibility of histological structures.

Predictions based on the model have been compared to observed post-mortem tissue americium levels in whole-body and tissue donations to the USTUR. Model predictions agreed reasonably well with the empirical observations (Kathren 1995 Kathren and Lynch 1996). 

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