Why the study?
Heart weight at post-mortem examination may not reflect the weight at death during decomposition, but heart dimensions may help estimate original heart weight.
Heart width increases during decomposition and may be used to estimate heart weight and determine cardiac hypertrophy at the time of death in decomposed hearts.
Caution in interpreting post-mortem heart weight of decomposed remains; animal findings leave open human validation of dimension-based estimates.
Heart weight is a routine measurement at post-mortem examination. An increased heart weight is associated with pre-existing heart disease and sudden cardiac death. However, during decomposition, the heart weight measured at post-mortem examination may not reflect the weight at the time of death. A previous study showed that heart dimensions can be used to estimate heart weight. This study documents the changes in heart dimensions during decomposition using porcine and ovine animal models. It shows that, in contrast to heart weight, which decreases in the post-mortem interval, the heart dimensions increase. Heart width increases and subsequently plateaus at the end of the 18 days to a mean of 6 and 8 mm in ovine and porcine hearts, whereas the length continues to increase. Using the results of this study, in conjunction with previous published literature, the heart width may be used as a parameter to estimate heart weight and determine cardiac hypertrophy at the time of death in decomposed hearts.
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Low et al. (2024) studied this question.
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