Death due to swine influenza: A forensic autopsy report.

A 29 year male who was working in army (soldier) at Pune, came to his house at Tarntaran (Punjab) on vacations to meet his family where he developed high grade fever, cough, dyspnoea, and was admitted in a private hospital. He was clinically suspected to be suffering from bilateral viral pneumonitis but the diagnosis of viral pneumonitis was never confirmed by laboratory tests in spite of admission in a hospital. Later on he died & the police was informed about his death. The police completed the inquest U/S 174CrPC & the dead body was shifted to the mortuary of Govt. Medical College, Amritsar for post mortem examination. A team of autopsy surgeons conducted the post mortem examination. The dead body was examined; nasal & pharyngeal swabs along with blood sample were taken from deceased and were sent to virology Deptt. , Post Graduate Institute, Chandigarh. The laboratory report mentioned the findings in favor of H1N1 virus & cause of death was declared as asphyxia as a result of viral Pneumonia (Species Swine Flu).

Age determination from sternal ends of the ribs- an autopsy study.

A random study of 500 cases for age determination from sternal ends of the ribs was carried out in the Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, Govt. Medical College, Amritsar with joint supervision of Department of Anatomy. The aim of the study was to determine the age after death with minimal error. Currently there are different parameters available to determine the age of a person like study of teeth, ossification of bones and other ancillary data, but the accurate reliability of these measures is only limited to a particular age group i.e. 25± 5 years. For the age beyond this, many workers in different parts of the world have done their studies to accurately determine the age of a person from the skeleton. Study by Iscan et al (1984) has emphasized fair amount of accurate assessment of age from the sternal end of the ribs. The present study was a similar attempt to analyze the reliability and accuracy of Iscan et al’s (1984) work in this part of the world.