[Subendocardial hemorrhage from the forensic medicine viewpoint].

The histological examination of cardial tissue samples concerning routine autopsy casework showed microscopic discrepancies in case of macroscopically found "subendocardial haemorrhages". In an attempt to analyse this phenomenon we compared the macroscopic and microscopic findings in 175 samples of endocardium from tissues presenting such haemorrhages of varying intensity: Only 8.6% showed a histological correlate and therefore could be verified as true haemorrhage. 53.7% presented mere hyperaemia and the remaining 37.7% even showed no microscopic finding at all. A satisfactory reason for this phenomenon could not be given by this investigation: The histological findings, however, do not depend on their cardial localization nor do they differ in relation to the cause of death or due to resuscitative actions. A possible cause of the described discrepancies may be a loss of haemoglobin of the erythrocytes. The results of this investigation point out that it might be necessary to reconsider the use of the term "subendocardial haemorrhage".