Nihon hōigaku zasshi = The Japanese journal of legal medicine
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A 59-year-old man was shot at the wheel of his car while waiting for a traffic light at an intersection. He was shot through the windshield from a distance of about 1 m. He was pronounced dead on arrival at an emergency hospital. ⋯ The fatal bullet entered the right chest cavity at the 7th intercostal space and lacerated the right lung and the ascending aorta after glancing on the right lobe of the liver. The cause of death was hemorrhage from the lacerated aorta. The grazing bullet wounds of the tongue and liver were shallow defects of the tissues with irregular margins.
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Nihon Hoigaku Zasshi · Jun 1996
Case Reports[Shotshell injuries--single or multiple shots?--a case report].
The case of a 64-year-old hunter who was accidentally shot at a distance of 40 meters with a shotgun by a member of hunting group was reported. At the scene, the victim was found dead and showed two bullet wounds in the left lateral chest and thigh, and a penetrated wound in the left knee. ⋯ The assailant and comrades who happened to be on the scene of the accident deposed that the only one shot sound was heard at that time. Whether quite different directions of these three wound tracks could be explained with single shot or multiple ones, we discussed the locus of the bullets in consideration of the posture of the victim.
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Nihon Hoigaku Zasshi · Apr 1996
Application of the Triage panel for drugs of abuse to forensic blood samples.
A simple and rapid screening procedure with Triage has been developed to detect 7 classes of drugs of abuse, phencyclidine (PCP), benzodiazepines (BZO), cocaine metabolite (COC), amphetamines (AMP), cannabinoids (THC), opiates (OPI), and barbiturates (BAR), in hemolyzed blood. A clear supernatant was obtained by mixing the blood with sulfosalicylic acid. The supernatant was neutralized with ammonium acetate and then screened using Triage. ⋯ The presence of methamphetamine is only one of the 5, codeine in 1, and phenobarbital in 4 was confirmed by gas chromatography. All 4 samples which were false positive for AMP contained phenethylamine at relatively high concentrations because of moderate to heavy putrefaction. This method, although disadvantageous to test for AMP and THC, is helpful for the forensic toxicologist because any kind of bloody fluid can be tested rapidly with Triage to detect toxic levels of PCP, BZO, COC, OPI, and BAR.
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Nihon Hoigaku Zasshi · Dec 1995
Review[Sudden unexpected natural death from a viewpoint of forensic pathology].
Sudden unexpected natural death (SUND) has several characteristics, such as unknown clinical history, very short course to death, evidence of trauma, interference of postmortem changes and social implications of diagnosis. From these points, SUND involves important challenges in forensic pathology. Presented here are the highlights of our SUND studies which allow scientific speculation into the antemortem pathophysiological course to death and a subsequent accurate diagnosis of the cause of death in SUND cases. 1. ⋯ This indicates that caution is necessary in evaluating clinical laboratory data in agonar patients in the emergency room. 3) Diagnostic evaluation of immunohistochemical myoglobin staining in the kidney In order to evaluate the diagnostic value of myoglobin (Mb) staining in the kidney in medicolegal autopsy cases, Mb staining was carried out on the kidney sections of 141 victims, including 59 natural and 82 unnatural deaths. At the same time, Serum and Urine GFR parameters were measured and systemic histological changes were observed on some sections of each kidney. The incidence of Mb positive cases was 74.6% in unnatural, and 25.4% in natural death, indicating the importance of nontraumatic rhabdomyolysis in natural death cases.
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Nihon Hoigaku Zasshi · Apr 1994
[Experimental exposure to carbon monoxide in rats (II)--blood volume of organs obtained by calculations from amounts of carbon monoxide in organ tissues and in blood].
We have found a correlation between the degree of carboxyhemoglobin saturation and the amount of carbon monoxide (CO) in the organ tissues of rats. This essay is titled "Experimental exposure to carbon monoxide in rats (I)". ⋯ Except for the 10% COHb experimental group, it has become clear that the blood volume in the spleen and in the kidney did not change much despite the variation of degree of carboxyhemoglobin saturation. In order to diagnose the cause of death of a burned cadaver in which the heart did not contain the liquid blood, values of CO amounts should be determined from those in the spleen or the kidney.