Histopathological Outlook of Myocarditis in Medico-Legal Heart Autopsy—A Study in a Tertiary Care Hospital

Histopathological examination of heart autopsies is routinely done in medico-legal cases to ascertain the cause of death. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of deaths worldwide. Myocarditis is clinically and pathologically defined as inflammation of the myocardium. Autopsy studies have reported an incidence of 3.5% to as high as 10%. In the present study comprising of 235 heart autopsies, the diagnosis of myocarditis is made in only two cases which constituted 0.8% of the total heart autopsies. This rate of myocarditis in our autopsy study is far lower than the published studies. The aim of our study is to assess the frequency of fatal course myocarditis in a consecutive series of autopsies and to describe the histologic features of the disease.