Significance of Contusion at the Vocal Cord and Perivocal Cord Area in Cases of Non-intubated Death.

Every finding during a neck autopsy may be essential for accurately diagnosing and explaining the mechanism of death. In this prospective study in the Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology of Jordan University Hospital, 17 out of 95 neck autopsies revealed contusions of the laryngeal mucosa in the vocal or perivocal area. These contusions were found to be associated with various causes of death, including mechanical asphyxia (such as throttling, ligature strangulation, hanging, smothering, choking, plastic bag asphyxia, gagging, and inhalation of blood) and other causes (such as atypical drowning, carbon monoxide poisoning, head injury due to a road traffic accident, burns, electrocution, and brain edema). This study provides insight into the mechanisms of this important lesion and may contribute to a better understanding of the cause of death.

Genital lichen sclerosus misdiagnosis: Forensic insights.

In this case study, we present an instance of genital lichen sclerosus et atrophicus that was initially misdiagnosed as child sexual abuse. A 6-year-old female presented to the emergency department with complaints of vaginal bleeding accompanied by pruritus. The initial suspicion of child abuse was prompted by the presence of blood. However, a thorough physical examination conducted by the forensic department ruled out any traumatic injuries and instead suggested an underlying pathology, ultimately diagnosed as lichen sclerosus et atrophicus. This case report underscores the vital role of forensics in excluding abuse as a cause in similar presentations, guiding the case towards a more accurate diagnosis. Additionally, it emphasizes the significance of possessing a comprehensive understanding of pathologies that can mimic abusive injuries, thereby preventing the potential consequences of an incorrect abuse diagnosis.

Medico-legal importance of necrotizing fasciitis.

Despite the rarity of necrotizing fasciitis (NF), it is a relatively common cause of death in many lawsuits. Families seek financial compensation or legal charges against those they believe to be involved in the death, usually physicians who did not identify the infection soon enough. This paper explores six cases in forensic pathology practice where NF posed a unique medico-legal dilemma.

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute data: analyzing published articles that used BioLINCC open access data.

Background: Data sharing is now a mandatory prerequisite for several major funders and journals, where researchers are obligated to deposit the data resulting from their studies in an openly accessible repository. Biomedical open data are now widely available in almost all disciplines, where researchers can freely access and reuse these data in new studies. We aim to assess the impact of open data in terms of publications generated using open data and citations received by these publications, where we will analyze publications that used the Biologic Specimen and Data Repository Information Coordinating Center (BioLINCC) as an example. Methods: As of July 2019, there was a total of 194 datasets stored in BioLINCC repository and accessable through their portal. We requested the full list of publications that used these datasets from BioLINCC, and we also performed a supplementary PubMed search for other publications. We used Web of Science (WoS) to analyze the characteristics of publications and the citations they received. Results: 1,086 published articles used data from BioLINCC repository, but only 987 (90.88%) articles were WoS indexed. The number of publications has steadily increased since 2002 and peaked in 2018 with a total number of 138 publications on that year. The 987 open data publications received a total of 34,181 citations up to 1 st October 2019. The average citation per item for the open data publications was 34.63. The total number of citations received by open data publications per year has increased from only 2 citations in 2002, peaking in 2018 with 2361 citations. Conclusion: The vast majority of studies that used BioLINCC open data were published in WoS indexed journals and are receiving an increasing number of citations.