Estimation of time of death through ultrastructural autolytic alterayions of the myocardium: a premiliary study

ABSTRACT

Several methods have been proposed for the diagnosis of time of somatic death. The authors, however did not find in the literature any study with this objective focusing on ultrastructural autolytic alternations of the myocardium. They studied, preliminarily the alterations occurring in myocardial fibers during the first 240 minutes of autolysis in order to establish if these were of help in the estimation of time of death. A well defined pattern of the sequence of events occurring in the nucleus, mitochondria, cytoplasmic granular substance, myofibrils and sarcolemma was observed, thus rendering its utilization in the estimation of time of death feasible