Cardiac blood pH as a possible indicator of postmortem interval |
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| Authors: | W R Sawyer D R Steup B S Martin R B Forney |
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| Affiliation: | Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis. |
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| Abstract: | Postmortem changes in the pH of blood and selected tissues in rats were evaluated at intervals ranging from 2 min to 96 h. Cardiac blood pH was significantly and reproducibly decreased in all groups at all postmortem intervals, independent of the method of sacrifice used. A preliminary study using cardiac blood obtained at autopsy from a limited number (n = 11) of human subjects demonstrated a significant negative correlation (r = -0.908, P less than 0.01) between postmortem interval (range 2 to 20 h) and cardiac blood pH. |
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