Journal of forensic and legal medicine
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Crush asphyxia involving motor vehicles usually occurs when a victim is trapped beneath a vehicle that slips from a jack while being worked on, or beneath a car that has rolled over during a crash. Two cases are reported where crush asphyxia resulted from quite different circumstances. Case 1: A 58-year-old woman was found dead trapped between her car door and frame. ⋯ This form of automobile door entrapment represents a distinct subset of automobile-related asphyxial deaths and illustrates a particular and unusual set of circumstances that may result in unexpected traumatic death. Getting, or leaning, out of a vehicle that does not have the handbrake engaged may result in wedging of the victim between the semi-opened door and car frame if the car rolls forward and the door impacts against a nearby unyielding object. Correlation of the physical dimensions of the door and frame with markings on the victim's body will assist in reconstructing the terminal events.
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Forensic pathologists often hesitate to use biochemical blood markers due to the risk of large postmortem changes and deviations from healthy subjects. Biochemical analyses of postmortem blood, if possible, may help to evaluate pathological status and determining the cause of death in forensic diagnosis, for example, in sudden unexpected death without obvious cause, or young adults with no apparent cause of death or antemortem information. Even commercially available biochemical markers were re-evaluated in the blood samples of 164 forensic autopsy cases. ⋯ For the evaluation of changes due to postmortem intervals, none of the markers except for triglyceride showed significant changes up to three days postmortem. As for sampling sites, femoral vein blood is generally recommended considering postmortem changes, but left cardiac blood was suitable for creatinine, pChE, and total cholesterol. For clinical forensic diagnosis of biochemical blood markers, we must determine the "forensic abnormal value" after collecting more cases by known causes with more information about the population.