Diagnostic postmortem angiography of fatal splenic artery haemorrhage

The site of fatal haemorrhage from the splenic artery, caused in one case by a ruptured aneurysm and in another case by an intracystic haemorrhage of a postoperative pancreatic pseudocyst, was revealed by postmortem angiography. Radiopaque silicone rubber vulcanizing at room temperature was used as contrast medium. In the latter case, the dissection was seriously hampered by tight postoperative intestinal adhesions following four abdominal operations to control bleeding into the gastrointestinal tract. The results indicate the usefulness of postmortem angiography with contrast medium vulcanizing at room temperature for postmortem diagnosis of rare causes of gastrointestinal haemorrhage.     

Radiograms of the paranasal sinuses as a principle of identifying catastrophe victims and unknown skeletons

The paper is devoted to the identification on the base of X-ray of frontal sinuses. These sinuses, developed in puberty doesn't change its shape during aging. Differentiation of the size and shape of sinuses is remarkable and probably is one of the individual features of the man. The system of classification of sinuses is proposed, basing on the area size, shape and symmetry. In the current everyday practice all X-ray radiograms are destroyed after five years of storage in Poland. For identification purpose all radiograms of sinuses and A-P punctures of skull should be stored in radiology departments, and arranged according to proposed classification system. The case is presented, in which the pictures of skull were the base of successful identification of skeleton.     

An analysis of the medicolegal autopsies performed in Adana, Turkey, in 1983-1988.

Data on 1,000 medicolegal autopsies have been compiled by the Morgue Department of the Adana branch of the Council of Forensic Medicine of Turkey, and have been reviewed to determine the local differences in causes of death, as well as age and sex distributions of decedents, in medicolegal deaths in this region. This is the first report on this subject in this region of Turkey. Unusual categories of death and incidences of death are also discussed. The results of this study show that the number of medicolegal autopsies and the rate of natural death in Adana are quite close to those of some other cities of Turkey and some foreign countries. Contrary findings are revealed in the frequencies of the causes of death.     

Multicenter evaluation of ultrafiltration, dialysis, and thermal coagulation as sample pretreatment methods for the colorimetric determination of paraquat in blood and tissues

Three methods of sample pretreatment for the rapid colorimetric determination of paraquat were compared: ultrafiltration, dialysis, and thermal coagulation. Spiked autopsy blood and tissue samples were examined in parallel in Groningen and Krakow and some samples were interchanged. All three methods gave recoveries between 87 to 102%; accuracy at the 20-mg/L level was within 10% of the target value and coefficients of variation in the 10 to 60-mg/L range were between 3 to 15%. Determinations in blood and liver in a fatal case of Gramoxone poisoning showed excellent agreement. Because of its reliability, speed, and simplicity, ultrafiltration is the method of choice.     

Ultrastructural differences of fibrin coagulation before and after cardiovascular arrest

The reconstruction of killing offences often requires the differentiation between vital and postmortal blood traces at the sites of action and finding. Earlier investigations seemed to imply the possibility of such a differentiation depending on the different clot structure. We therefore examined clots prior and after 10 minutes of complete occlusion of the upper extremity morphologically and morphometrically with the REM. The morphologic comparison of these clots revealed narrow, round shaped fibrin fiber networks for clots of native blood, whereas clots after occlusion showed linear, rarely connected long fibrin fibers. The morphometry of the fibrin free spaces revealed a significant enlargement of the single fibrin free spaces as well as of the total fibrin free space after occlusion. For capillary blood a significant decrease in fiber diameter was observed after occlusion. The examination of clinical clotting parameters revealed alterations of thrombocyte aggregation for the collagen induction, a slightly reduced thrombocyte retention and slightly steeper flanks in the thromboelastogram after occlusion. The reason for these changes was interpreted as lack of high energetic phosphates in the retraction process as the clotting cascade itself requires a very high amount of these phosphates. Use of these results in the forensic practice will have to take factors as temperature, drying out, surface-structure and many others into account.