[Whipple's disease: A case of postmortem diagnosis].

The paper describes a case of the postmortem diagnosis of Whipple's disease, a rare bacterial infection, in a patient with multiple organ dysfunction showing intestinal manifestations with massive retroperitoneal lymphadenopathy. Histochemical and electron microscopic methods were used to examine the patient, which showed the morphological changes occurring in the lymph nodes and bowel and the ultrastructural characteristics of Tropheryma whipplei while examining the sections primarily fixed in formalin and embedded in paraffin. The systemic pattern of the disease is depicted.