Informed consent of postmortem sampling: Bibliographic review.

Background: Informed consent is based on the principle of personal autonomy, the moral conception of respect for the dignity of the human being and therefore on his freedom. The rest of the universal bioethical principles are articulated in the informed consent process: non-maleficence, justice, and beneficence.

Objective: Establish the situations in which it is pertinent to apply informed consent in the taking of postmortem samples from a bioethical approach versus a legal approach.

Methodology: A review was carried out in: SCIELO, LILACS, IBECS, CUMED, NIH, Repository of the Pan American Health Organization; using keywords: informed consent, human rights, autonomy, bioethics, autopsy, post-mortem samples and forensic doctors and a combination of these. The inclusion criteria: articles with a maximum age of five years, in Spanish and English with free access.

Results: 113 articles were obtained using the keywords and their combinations, plus another 43 additional records identified from other sources such as laws, regulations, etc. By eliminating the sources: duplicates, not relevant, disabled, and incomplete, a total of 49 articles were worked on.

Conclusions: There is a need to include in the national and international ethical guidelines that regulate scientific research and guidelines to follow on the completion of the informed consent process in studies that involve postmortem samples, after their primary use.