Department of Legal Medicine

In addition to education and research, the department routinely performs forensic autopsies requested by the Hyogo Prefectural Police Headquarters. In recent years, the number of forensic autopsies has been increasing nationwide, and at our university, we perform more than 200 autopsies per year. The bodies that are dissected are those who died in crime or whose cause of death is unknown. For the Department of Legal Medicine, autopsy is the basis of student education and research, and the knowledge gained during autopsies is used to educate students and serve as the starting point for research. Lectures on Department of Legal Medicine are given to fourth-year students. We aim to have students acquire legal medicine knowledge they will need when they become clinical doctors in the future.

In my research, I have been studying the causes of sudden death in relatively young people, and genetic abnormalities that cause arrhythmic death. Although I do not handle many autopsy cases of sudden death at a young age, this type of research not only fulfills the original purpose of an autopsy, which is to clarify the cause of death, but also has an aspect that can lead to preventive medicine for the bereaved families, so I would like to continue this research in the future.

Although the Department of Legal Medicine is classified as basic medicine, it is a course that has a strong clinical medical character, as it involves the daily task of performing autopsies. Currently, there are about 150 doctors nationwide who are involved in forensic autopsies, and it is hoped that there will be more students who aspire to become Legal Medicine after graduating School of Medicine.