Nerve conduction as a means of estimating early post-mortem interval |
| |
Authors: | K J Straton A Busuttil M A Glasby |
| |
Institution: | (1) Department of Anatomy, and Forensic Medicine Unit, University of Edinburgh Medical School, Teviot Place, EH8 9AG Edinburgh, UK |
| |
Abstract: | Summary Methods in current practice for ascertaining time of death are largely based on the cooling of the body after death and are
somewhat unreliable. A theoretica relationship is known to exist between the decline in the properties defining nerve conduction
and time after death caused by the gradual cessation of metabolic activity in nerves. A number of such properties were measured
in rats during life and after death. In most cases the relationship was found to be inconsistent. The chronaxie of the strength
duration curve for the sciatic nerve was, however, found to increase consistently and reproducibly in a linear fashion over
the first 90 min after death to a plateau value which was maintained beyond 135 min. These findings are discussed as the possible
basis of a forensic method of determining the duration of the “post mortem interval” within the first few hours after death.
|
| |
Keywords: | Early post mortem interval Time of death Nerve conduction Strength duration curve Chronaxie |
本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |