1Assistant Professor, Dept of Forensic Medicine, Adichunchanagiri Institute of Medical sciences, B G Nagar, Mandya, Karnataka, India
2Professor, Dept of Pathology, MSRMC, Bengaluru
3Assistant Professor, Dept. of Forensic Medicine, MSRMC, Bengaluru
4Professor, Dept. of Forensic Medicine, MSRMC, Bengaluru
*Corresponding Author: Dr. Vinay J, MD Assistant Professor, Dept of Forensic Medicine, Adichunchanagiri Institute of Medical sciences, B G Nagar, Mandya, Karnataka, India Mobile: +919740135014 Email: drvinayjgowda@gmail.com
Online published on 21 July, 2018.
The precise dating of injury is extremely important in practice of forensic pathology. As we know when injuries occur, the host responds by setting a series of events, consisting inflammation, proliferation and maturation in well-orchestrated sequence. Even though there are many literatures on this subject from abrasion; studies on wound dating from laceration are very few. In this context, the present study of wound dating from gross and microscopic level was taken up.
‘Dating of Laceration by Gross and Histo-pathological Examination of skin-A Postmortem study’ was carried out in the Department of Forensic Medicine, in M s Ramaiah Medical college. A total of 70 samples were correlated to time frame the occurrence of different gross changes and microscopic changes that follow the injury.
Amongst the > 2weeks old injuries, histological study increased the accuracy (80%) as compared to gross examination (20%). On gross examination, the presence of hemorrhage or redness with swelling indicates that laceration is approximately 1 day old. However, in cases where comorbidities were found significant delay in the healing process was observed.
This study signifies that, gross appearance of lacerations during later stages (>1 day old) were inconsistent for dating the injury. However, by histopathological examination, reliability and accuracy of wound dating increases.
Forensic Pathology, Dating of laceration, Gross and Histopathological examination
