Forensic medical assessment of morphological changesat different postmortem interval

Abstract

Purpose: The postmortem interval (PMI) evaluation is one of priorities while performing aforensic medical examination of corpse. To date, there is lack of information on morphologicalpostmortem changes of some internal organs. Considering the persistent need to develop themethod for a precise assessment of PMI, postmortem changes in these potentially informativeorgans were evaluated. The aim of study was to analyze morphological postmortem changesin prostate and uterus. Materials and Methods: histological samples of 40 prostate and40 uterine tissues (n=80) from corpses of deceased aged 18–75 years. Only cases withknown time of death were included to study, the time of death was taken from policereports. Exclusion criteria were cases of violent death, death with massive blood loss, tumorsof studied internal organs and cases when diagnosis was not made by a forensic medicalexaminer. The PMI of studied cases ranged from 1 to 6 days. Histological slides were madewith a staining by hematoxylin and eosin, x200 magnification, using Olympus ÂÕ41 andOlympus ÂÕ46 microscopes, Olympus SC50 camera. Postmortem morphological changeswere evaluated by a calculation of blank spaces percentage in microscopical structuresusing a JS-based software. Relationship between PMI and morphological changes wascalculated by the Spearman's rank correlation. Results: the average percentage of blankspaces in uterine tissues was smaller than in prostate tissues (1.99 and 9.65, respectively).The slower growing of blank spaces was in uterus. In prostate samples, a notable increaseof blank spaces was observed between 48 and 72 hours after death. After this period, theincrease slowed down and then an increase was observed again between 120 and 144 hoursafter death. In uterine samples, a slight acceleration was observed between 72 and 120 hoursafter death and then slowing down between 120 and 144 hours after death. Blank spaces inevaluated histological slides were increasing directly proportional to the PMI, a statisticallysignificant interconnection was defined (p < 0.05). Conclusions: The morphological post-mortem changes in prostate and uterus were developing at certain time frames. Blank spacespercentage, in studied histological slides, were increasing directly proportional to the PMIincrease, a statistically significant interconnection was defined. Therefore, the results ofstudy show the possibility of the evaluation of a postmortem time interval by assessing suchmorphological changes in these organs, which could be used in forensic medical cases