Wound Dating By Gross And Histopathological Examination of Abrasions - An Autopsy Based Study

Introduction: Abrasions are the commonly encountered blunt force injuries. Exact ageing of wound is inevitable in routine forensic investigations. Each phase in wound healing such as inflammation, proliferation, and maturation helps us understand the chain of events in wound healing. This study was done to determine the age of abrasions since the time of infliction till death by histopathology and gross examination.

Materials and Methods: Postmortem study of wound dating by gross and histopathological examination of abrasions was carried out in the Department of Forensic Medicine, in Sri Ramachandra Medical College. Cases subjected to medico legal autopsy having well demarcated abrasions were taken up for the study. A total of 37 abrasions were studied by microscopy in correlation with the gross changes at various time interval. Abrasions ranging from 0 hour to a maximum of 21 days were studied. Cases with known time of infliction of injury were included in the study and cases in a state of decomposition were excluded from the study.

Results: Microscopic changes corresponds to the gross changes in abrasions whereas, with various co-morbid conditions wounds showed disparity by delaying healing process.

Conclusion: This study reveals us when subjective evaluation of gross findings are combined with the histopathological examination, the reliability and precision of dating wounds increases in comparison with gross findings alone, especially before giving opinions.