Forensic science international
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We report the first autopsy case of fatal gastric dilatation without rupture. A 31-year-old woman who lived alone was found dead in her living room. Despite being very thin, she showed marked abdominal distention. ⋯ Severe congestion was observed in the intestine and cecum. Theses findings suggest that bulimia nervosa together with anorexia nervosa resulted in rapid dilation of the stomach. We conclude that the cause of death was acute circulatory failure from hypovolemic shock that occurred following compression of the inferior vena cava and superior mesenteric vein, and by loss of circulatory volume to the third space.
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Case Reports
Fatal diving accidents: two case reports and an overview of the role of forensic examinations.
During the years 2004-2006, seven divers, who had deadly accidents, underwent post-mortem examination at the Institute of Legal Medicine of the University of Munich. The cause of death in all divers was drowning with typical pathomorphological findings. This should be regarded as separated to the triggering reason for drowning. ⋯ High risk-taking, lack of technical service, and deficiency of dive equipment care were main reasons for death. We present two of these cases which showed several problems occurring concurrently. Autopsy always is necessary to look for indices for application of force or to exclude competitive reasons for death.
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Fatal falls from great height are a frequently encountered setting in forensic pathology. They present--by virtue of a calculable energy transmission to the body--an ideal model for the assessment of the effects of blunt trauma to a human body. As multislice computed tomography (MSCT) has proven not only to be invaluable in clinical examinations, but also to be a viable tool in post-mortem imaging, especially in the field of osseous injuries, we performed a MSCT scan on 20 victims of falls from great height. ⋯ Our study suggests a marked increase of extensive damage to different body regions at about 20 kJ and more. The thorax was most often affected, regardless of the amount of impacting energy and the primary impact site. Cranial fracture frequency displayed a biphasic distribution with regard to the impacting energy; they were more frequent in energies of less than 10, and more than 20 kJ, but rarer in the intermediate energy group, namely that of 10-20 kJ.