Pennsylvania Statutes Title 16 P.S. Counties § 4236. Coroner's investigations

(1) sudden deaths not caused by readily recognizable disease or wherein the case  1 of death cannot be properly certified by a physician on the basis of prior (recent) medical attendance;

(2) deaths occurring under suspicious circumstances, including those where alcohol, drugs or other toxic substances may have had a direct bearing on the outcome;

(3) deaths occurring as a result of violence or trauma, whether apparently homicidal, suicidal or accidental (including, but not limited to, those due to mechanical, thermal, chemical, electrical or radiational injury, drowning, cave-ins and subsidences);

(4) any death in which trauma, chemical injury, drug overdose or reaction to drugs or medication or medical treatment, was a primary or secondary, direct or indirect, contributory, aggravating or precipitating cause of death;

(5) operative and peri-operative deaths in which the death is not readily explainable on the basis of prior disease;

(6) any death wherein the body is unidentified or unclaimed;

(7) deaths known or suspected as due to contagious disease and constituting a public hazard;

(8) deaths occurring in prison, a penal institution or while in the custody of the police;

(9) deaths of persons whose bodies are to be cremated, buried at sea or otherwise disposed of so as to be thereafter unavailable for examination;

(10) sudden infant death syndrome; and

(11) stillbirths.