Hi Peggy: I see you have had a couple of responses. Allow me to answer this from my physician's perspective. First, it is going to be exceedingly difficult for you to obtain an autopsy report without some legal standing as to why you should have access. In this day of HIPAA (I always get that abbreviation wrong), it's tough enough to obtain medical records on my patients as a physician. (By the way, despite using my MD letterhead and citing medical issues, I have been denied access to medical reports of my grandfather who died 50 years ago!). However, if you are going to look, you need to know where the autopsy was done. These days at least, there are generally two options. First, if the patient was hospitalized and died as an in-patient there is a good chance that the post-mortem was done at the hospital by a staff pathologist and the results become part of the deceased's medical record. There are some instances where a post-mortem may be done outside the hospital, such as questionable death, death within less than 24 hours of admission, no available pathologist, etc. Secondly, the postmortem may have been done by the medical examiner. In Baltimore City this is both a city and state level function. Medical examiner PMs are done when there is a question of foul play, when there is unexpected death, etc. The medical examiners office in Baltimore is on the campus of the University of Maryland Medical School (but is a separate state office). I haven't a clue where their records are archived. Now, why would you really want a post-mortem exam for genealogy purposes? You would of course pin point the date and anatomic cause of death, but frankly the remainder is generally not only tough for the lay person to understand but quite gory. It's especially unpleasant when you knew the individual. If you've ever attended an autopsy, you will know that it is just another job to the pathologist, it's done in a very cold and calculating manner, which is of course, how it should be. When my grandmother died suddenly and unexpectedly at my mother's home in 1969, an autopsy was required. Interestingly a copy was sent to my mother, which I saw many years later. It was sobering to read the medical jargon organ by organ and know that this had been the person that had lived with my family for years. Just my two cents, from a slightly different perspective. Gary 4 May 2006 Baltimore http://home.att.net/~g.ruppert Date: Thu, 4 May 2006 19:22:35 -0400 From: "Peggy Coughlan" <peggy0155@comcast.net> To: BALTGEN-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <000301c66fd1$a0d15840$6501a8c0@PeggyNotebook> Subject: Question - Is an Autopsy report considered a Vital Record? Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I have a question for the list. I had a close relative who died and an autopsy was performed on him. My understanding is that it is pretty Graphic and I wonder if this report would be considered a vital record. If the autopsy was performed in Maryland would it offer me any additional details? I have his death record and know his cause of death. I would appreciate any thoughts on this subject. Peggy