Archiv für Kriminologie
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Archiv für Kriminologie · Jul 2015
Review[Pre- and perimortem bone trauma vs. postmortem damages-- Principles of differentiation].
In medicolegal practice, evidence of trauma or damage on human skeletons or single bones raises the question whether this was inflicted in an antemortem, perimortem, or postmortem time frame. Trauma that occurred around the time of death, i. e., perimortem trauma, is of special forensic interest, as it can yield clues about the manner and cause of death. Perimortem traumas thus need to be carefully distinguished both from antemortem injuries that were evidently survived (these can still be useful for identification purposes) and from postmortem damage, as may occur during retrieval of remains. ⋯ The difficulty of distinguishing antemortem trauma and postmortem damage from perimortem trauma rises sharply the closer in time they were inflicted to the time of the death event. Additional postmortem changes due to exposure of the bones to the surrounding deposition conditions may also occur after the relevant postmortem damage or antemortem trauma was inflicted and further complicate the problem. In this context, the "perimortem interval" and the "Fracture Freshness Index" (FFI) are discussed as means to classify the time frame of traumas.