Peter T. Lin, M.D.

Peter T. Lin, MD, is a forensic and general autopsy pathologist with subspecialty interest in cardiovascular pathology.

Dr. Lin is also Assistant Chief Medical Examiner for the Southern Minnesota Regional Medical Examiner Office, which provides medical examiner services to 8 counties in Southeastern Minnesota, as well as 2 additional consult counties in Minnesota and Wisconsin. As a medical examiner, he investigates sudden, unexpected, and violent deaths, performs autopsies, collects evidence, determines cause and manner of death, and testifies in court.

As an autopsy pathologist and co-director of the Autopsy Laboratory at Mayo Clinic, Dr. Lin also performs autopsies on patients with complex medical diseases to help elucidate the mechanisms and causes of diseases, assess the efficacy and complications of treatments, and obtain tissue for research. These autopsies provide important data for improving quality of care, and, more importantly, they can help to answer families' questions about events leading to death, as well as other underlying diseases, some of which may have a genetic component.

As a cardiovascular surgical pathologist, Dr. Lin examines a variety of pathology specimens removed during surgical operations, such as transplant and non-transplant endomyocardial biopsies, explant hearts, native and prosthetic valve specimens, myectomy specimens, and aorta specimens, in order to diagnose cardiovascular diseases such as cardiac amyloidosis, sarcoidosis, myocarditis, heart transplant rejection, underlying storage diseases, heritable cardiomyopathies, heritable aortopathies, and vasculitis.