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Anatomical dissection is, despite several critical annotations, a highly valuable component of under- and postgraduate medical education and research. Our current causes-of-death statistics on our body donors is aimed to find out to which extent they are representative of the Austrian population.

We evaluated the causes of death stated in their death certificates of a total of 3399 people who donated their bodies to our department in the course of the last 25 years (1988–2013). The categorisation is based on the official ICD-10-WHO classification.

Our data show a prevalence of cardiovascular diseases in about half of the donors (42%) examined; no gender difference could be revealed in cardiovascular diseases. Tumours were responsible for about 20% of deaths, lead by lung cancer; cancers showed a slight male excess. All other deaths were caused by diseases of the respiratory …