This article is about the episode. For the procedure see Autopsy (procedure).

House: Is it still illegal to perform an autopsy on a living person?

Cuddy: Are you high?

House: If it's Tuesday, I'm wasted.

— Autopsy

Autopsy is a 2nd season episode of House which first aired on September 20, 2005. A nine-year-old with terminal cancer who is hallucinating comes to the hospital. House thinks her bravery in the face of imminent death is actually a symptom of her condition. Meanwhile, House tries to get over his hay fever and test drives a motorcycle.

In one of the most honored episodes of the series, the team deals with a young terminal cancer patient who, if they are lucky, will live another year with successful treatment. The different members of the team each express their views on what many may see as a pointless exercise. However, the decision for House appears to be easy-he's not really concerned about the outcome, only his puzzle.

However, as he gets closer to the truth, we see in Andie another part of House-the part that is always balancing the pain of continuing with life against the somewhat lesser pain of ending it. Each in their own way, House and Andie are desperately hanging on to life and making the best of it, House in spite of his disability and Andie in spite of her illness. When House talks to Andie about whether she really wants to go through with a dangerous procedure, we can really see that he's assessing his own choice to continue life in pain against the release of death. In contrast, on the outside Andie seems fine with taking the risk she's about to face, but we can also see that deep down, she too is wondering whether she's making the right choice.

However, as Wilson points out to House, the fact that we all come with an expiry date is no reason not to enjoy life. Andie is truly happy with singing, school, family and thinking about boys, despite her baldness and intense drug regimen. House, despite the fact that he clearly has as many years ahead of him as he's willing to bear, is miserable, despite having his dream job and being one of the most famous doctors on the planet. However, despite himself, Andie does have an effect on House and he tries to enjoy life more and even finds a little more joy by the end of the episode.

This investigation of the choice between a miserable life and death is explored in many future episodes, and dominates the character development of Thirteen later in the series. From Kutner to Darrien, many characters make that choice and, when the doctors have the chance, make sure the patients choose life.

On the other hand, this episode contains very little character development and, despite the fact that events in the episode have an effect on future episodes, it doesn't really advance any story arcs. For example, Stacy Warner is conspicuously absent and even Lisa Cuddy has a secondary role. Many of the characters seem to merely be there to express ethical reservations about performing such complicated procedures on a terminal patient. Poor Jesse Spencer is once again cast at the naysayer and "jerk" who has to point out the ultimate futility of their endeavors. Robert Sean Leonard also appears to portray Wilson as a person who rationalizes their efforts by pointing out that twelve months is a significant period of time for a young person. However, the writers seem to have forgotten that Wilson's usually portrayed as the conscience of the group, a task that in this episode appears to fall, rather clumsily, to House. When House has to point out an ethical dilemma, it's usually because the other characters are blinded by self-interest, not misplaced compassion.

Andie, a 9-year-old terminal cancer patient, is happily singing and dancing at home while preparing for the day ahead. She suddenly has a seizure and hallucinations and is found by her worried mother.

House comes to work with hay fever and has decided to take a sick day, but Wilson intercepts him with details about the patient. House in intrigued by the hallucinations when he finds out her cancer is in remission, and there's no cancer in her brain. He agrees to take the case.

The team is reviewing the patient's medical history, which contains a long line of treatment. They can't come up with a reason for the hallucinations. House orders a tox screen and an MRI. He tells Cameron not to get attached to the patient.

Chase takes Andie to the MRI. Andie is very familiar with all the technology and procedures. The MRI and tox screen are clear. House excuses himself to go home and orders them to run a lot of tests.

Chase gets ready to perform an angiogram. Andie asks him to kiss her because she has never kissed a boy, and fears she may have missed her chance. Chase reluctantly does so.

House comes in the next morning, not having slept. All the new tests are negative. Foreman suggests it might be syphilis from involuntary sex. Chase argues against this theory, and tells them that Andie has never even kissed a boy. He backs this up by telling the team that she asked him to kiss her which shocks House, Foreman and Cameron. House thinks that she's being manipulative and that she did get Chase to kiss her. However, Andie denies ever having had sex and Cameron's examination confirms it.

House interrupts Wilson to tell him that they have no idea what's wrong with Andie. House is still convinced that there are other problems they haven't discovered yet. He thinks she may have a heart tumor because of the low oxygen saturation. That would mean she has two different cancers - a statistical unlikelihood. Wilson is skeptical and won't let House do exploratory surgery.

Citing better acoustics, House meets his team in the locker room so they can listen to recordings of Andie's heart for auditory irregularities which may indicate the presence of a tumor. Cameron hears an extra flap in her mitral valve. House orders surgery to look at it.

Wilson and House discuss Andie's bravery. Wilson is impressed, but House isn't.

They find a tumor in her lung and heart, growing along the heart wall. They begin to remove it but worry they they may have to remove too much of the heart to repair it, and the tumor may have metastasized. During the surgery, Andie's eye starts bleeding.

The heart tumor turns out to be benign, and the eye bleeding obviously isn't related to it, and neither are the hallucinations. House thinks it might be a blood clot in her brain, a consequence of the heart tumor. They start looking for it. The angiogram is clean - if there's a clot, they can't find it.

They can't do exploratory surgery on the brain, and they know a clot could cause death at any time.

House wonders how brave Andie will be when Wilson tells her she's going to die. Wilson who's disgusted tells House to go to hell before storming off.

Wilson goes to tell Andie she will die. Her mother is more upset than she is. House wonders if Andie's bravery is a symptom of some form of brain damage which may be affecting her ability to feel fear. Foreman feels the only way they will find the clot is at the autopsy. This gives House an idea.

House asks Cuddy if he can induce a hypothermic cardiac arrest, drain half the patient's blood and re-infuse it to look for the clot with a portable MRI. Despite the risks and lack of FDA approval, Cuddy agrees. Wilson goes to get consent from the mother. House learns that Wilson hasn't told Andie the risks, and surmises that perhaps Andie's bravery is from not knowing what's going on. House goes to talk to her about the risks of the procedure and how long she has to live even if they are successful. Andie doesn't want to die, despite the fact that the treatment for her cancer will be painful, because her mother needs her and she loves her.

A large surgical team tests the procedure on a cadaver several times. To get useful results they need to complete the procedure within one minute without bumping the body. After numerous failures during the trial runs which would result in Andie's death if occurring during the actual operation, they finally find a solution to keep the blood lines from being moved: bolting them to the table.

Later, as Cuddy, Cameron and Wilson along with a group of people watch from the observation, House, Chase, Foreman and a group of Doctors begin the procedure on the patient. They cool her body temperature down to 70°F (21°C), sending her into atrial fibrillation. They then drain her blood and re-infuse it. Just after the end of the sixty seconds, Foreman spots a slowdown in blood flow in the hippocampus. With no time remaining, they start warming her up again. They restart her heart and begin the surgery.

After a few tense moments while the surgeon's unable to find anything, they find the clot where Foreman saw it. Andie recovers, and is still brave. Wilson points out that the bravery obviously wasn't a symptom, as the clot was nowhere near her amygdala, the part of the brain regulating emotions. House admits he was wrong, but still isn't impressed. Wilson points out that Andie enjoys life more than House does, and could actually outlive him. Andie leaves the hospital after giving House a hug and then invites him for a walk. He tells her he's not much on walks in the park.

But while going home, House stops by a motorcycle dealership, and takes one of the bikes out on an exciting run through beautiful countryside.

The patient requests a male doctor. House comes in and sees blood in the patient's groin. He tried to circumcise himself with some box cutters when his girlfriend reacted poorly to his uncircumcised penis. House sends him to a plastic surgeon.

Clots are a common complication of many forms of cancer.

• Afghanistan is a country in central Asia with a population just less than that of California.
• Al-Qaeda or "The Base" is a militant terrorist group.
• Buffalo is the second largest city in New York State and sits on the border with Canada.
• We don't see House take vicodin in this episode, but he does admit taking some after Andie's mom approves the procedure, along with other medications for his hay fever.
• House uses an English variation of the hospital's motto " Omnes te moriturum amant " when talking about Andie (If you're dying, suddenly everybody loves you).
• House uses a lot of Yiddish. "Rivkah" is the modern Hebrew for "Rebecca". "Gemutlich" is "comfortable" or "friendly" - a borrow from German. "Shanda" is used to express shame, particularly when Jews are embarrassed before non-Jews. Roughly, he's saying that the clinic patient is ashamed he's not circumcised and wanted to go through with it to make his girlfriend happy.
• Abraham is one of the key figures in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In all three religions, he makes the original covenant with God and is often considered to the forefather of the Jewish and Arab peoples.
• House is right that prostitutes do not kiss their clients on the mouth. It's not an intimacy problem - they just want to avoid catching a cold, influenza, mononucleosis, or other diseases that are transmitted in that manner.
• This is the first episode where it appears that House and Wilson's offices are joined by a balcony. This connecting balcony doesn't appear in the previous episodes, but the characters act like it has always been there.
• House test drives an Aprilia 1000cc RSV Mille. However, this isn't House's Motorcycle, which is a Honda CBR1000RR.
• Broadway is the only street that runs the length of the island of Manhattan. It is synonymous with live theatre.
• "A five-six-seven-eight" is taken from A Chorus Line, which is also referenced in The Down Low.
• Cats is another Broadway musical.
• Des Moines is the capital and largest city in the state of Iowa.

Nessun dorma:

The aria House plays in the shower in order to try out the acoustics before listening to Andie's heart beat is Nessun dorma from Turandot by Puccini. Nessun dorma is a very familiar piece, and many critics stated that they expected the show to use something a little more obscure. That initially appeared to be a fair statement as the show is well known for its eclectic and varied choice of music. The other music in the episode is a bit more daring – a song by Kathleen York (who would go on to guest star in Season 4) and a special cover by Hugh Laurie's friend Elvis Costello recorded especially for the episode. However, it the plot of the episode parallels the plot of Turandot in several important respects (see the link at the House M.D. Guide, below) and the choice of Nessun dorma was to punctuate the similarities. For example:

Pavarotti "nessun dorma" Nessun dorma

• Like the Prince in the opera, House must answer three questions to get to the princess (in his case, why does she have low oxygen levels, where does the clot come from, and why is she so brave). In all three cases, the answer is "the heart".
• Turandot herself is seen as cold, and to find the final answer, Andie's body temperature has to be artificially lowered.
• Turandot has numerous suitors, and Andie is universally loved as well.
• House complains he can't sleep because of his hay fever, and "nessun dorma" translates as "none shall sleep".
• Turandot features beheadings of the unsuccessful suitors, and the clinic patient tries to remove the head of his penis to please his girlfriend.
• The Prince brags that his kiss will make Turandot his, and Andie steals a kiss from Chase.
• The Prince brags that a secret is hidden with him, and Andie has a clot hidden inside her brain.

• At the beginning of the episode, Andie is seemingly injecting herself with an empty syringe.
• House said he took 1, 000 mg of Benadryl. That's forty 25 mg capsules. That much would likely result in delirium, tachycardia, irregular heart rhythm and likely death.
• Andie has no more hair on her head, because of the cancer, but that would make her eyebrow and eyelash hair also fall off. Under the operating room light, you can clearly see that they were bleached.
• Chase's age is given as 30, but in an earlier episode, it was given as 26. Jesse Spencer was 26 at the time the episode was released.
• When House casually tosses his iPod into a chair, he's being far too rough with it. A shock of that nature would most likely damage the internal hard drive.
• House uses the iPod incorrectly. To change from Nessun dorma to Andie's heartbeat on that model of iPod, he should hit the "track change" button above the scroll wheel. Instead, he rotates the thumb counterclockwise, which would lower the volume.
• During the practise runs of the procedure there is a brief shot where a nurse adjusts the head restraint and the "cadaver" clearly blinks. (32:48)
• During the procedure, they're using a MRI in a room with metal clamps. However, a MRI would only affect ferromagnetic metals. If the clamps, for an example, were copper, it would not be a problem.
• The motorcycle House rides at the end of the episode is an Aprilia RSV1000 V-Twin, but the motorcycle sounds are from an inline 4.
• At the end of the episode, when House snorts the diphenhydramine, the same amount is there after he snorts it as before.