1Assistant Professor, Dept. of Forensic Medicine & Toxicology, Govt. Medical College, Nagpur, Maharashtra
2Professor & Head, Dept. of Forensic Medicine & Toxicology, Shri V. N. Govt. Medical College, Yavatmal
3Associate Professor, Dept. of Forensic Medicine & Toxicology, Shri V. N. Govt. Medical College, Yavatmal
4Assistant Professor, Dept. of Biochemistry, Shri V. N. Govt. Medical College, Yavatmal
Online published on 7 August, 2013.
The interval between the death and the time of the examination of the body is known as postmortem interval. The exact time of death cannot be fixed by any method but only approximate range of time since death can be given because there are considerable biological variation in the individual cases. The present study was carried out in the Morgue and the Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, of Shri V. N. Government Medical College, Yavatmal from Maharashtra. The vitreous humor was sampled from about 201 cases subjected to autopsy.
The results of the present study lead to the following conclusions:
There is linear relationship between vitreous potassium concentration and postmortem interval.
The Vitreous Potassium based formula for the estimation of Postmortem interval is PMI = 11.63 (K+) - 70.90.
For first 12 hours with increase PMI sodium/potassium ratio also increases. Then it is suddenly decreases from 12.1 hours onwards up to 24 hours.
Age, sex, cause of death and environmental condition have no appreciable effect in determining the correlation of potassium in vitreous humor with postmortem interval.
Vitreous Potassium, Sodium, Postmortem Interval/Time Since Death
