Résumé
Objectlve To study the significance of injury and posthumous changes to the axonal in brain stem and provide evidence to the forensic discrimination of brainstem injury. Methods Select the cases that died of the primary brainstem injury or other disease randomly, All cases were divided into control group and experimental group, control group and experimental group that were autopsied at the postmortem interval less than 24h or 48h, or longer than 24h or 48h. The brainstem tissue were cut and stained by silver; Two hundred four samples were observed in microscope and selected 9～10 widest axonal to measure its diameter, then analysis the data. Results There is significant difference in axonal diameter of midbrain and mudella between control group (not including those cases died of cardiovascular diseases) and experiment group (P0.05). Conclusion The axonal swelling of the brainstem is closely related with the traumatic injury, so axonal swelling is a finding useful for identification of traumatic brainstem lesions, but death from cardiovascular diseases should be excluded.