Provides a practical forensic approach to determining causation of death when trauma and heart disease co-occur.
May guide forensic attribution in concurrent trauma-heart disease deaths; leaves open need for validation in prospective studies.
Virtually all forensic experts deal not only with criminal, suspicious, accidental and suicidal deaths, but are also confronted with a wide range of deaths where a significant natural element is revealed at autopsy. The assaulted victim that dies suddenly or unexpectedly from a stroke during or immediately succeeding the receipt of some non-fatal injuries, or otherwise suffers a clinically unexplained death, can pose far greater difficulties over causation than a gun-shot or a stabbing. This paper presents an analysis of the problem and an approach for determining the cause of death in cases of concurrent trauma with heart disease, and in cases with a substantial natural element of disease but exclusion of trauma. Relevant cases with history, autopsy findings, histopathological findings and toxicological findings are presented in order to illustrate the issue from a practical angle.
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K. Vij (1999) studied this question.
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