Reijnen G, Buster M C, Vos P J E, Reijnders U J L
Department of Forensic Medicine, Amsterdam Public Health Service, Rijnstate Hospital Arnhem, The Netherlands.
Department of Epidemiology & Health Promotion, Amsterdam Public Health Service, The Netherlands.
J Forensic Leg Med. 2017 Nov;52:1-4. doi: 10.1016/j.jflm.2017.07.013. Epub 2017 Jul 26.
Determining the time of death of bodies recovered from water can be difficult. A feature of drowning is the presence of external foam. This study describes the presence of external foam in relation to the post-mortem period.
The study utilizes a database of death reports dated between January 2011 and July 2016. For bodies recovered from fresh water, the presence or absence of external foam was noted.
In this study, 112 death reports are included. Of these reports, 18 mentioned external foam, which account for 16.1% of the entire study population. In the population with a post-mortem period of less than 24 h, external foam was detected in 27.7% of cases. All 18 incidents with external foam had an estimated post-mortem period of less than 24 h.
In our study, external foam was only present in freshwater drowning cases with a post-mortem period of less than 24 h. Based on this finding, the presence of external foam may be useful as an additional indicator when estimating the time of death in freshwater drowning.
确定从水中打捞起的尸体的死亡时间可能很困难。溺水的一个特征是存在外部泡沫。本研究描述了与死后时间相关的外部泡沫的存在情况。
该研究利用了一个2011年1月至2016年7月期间的死亡报告数据库。对于从淡水中打捞起的尸体,记录是否存在外部泡沫。
本研究纳入了112份死亡报告。在这些报告中,有18份提到了外部泡沫,占整个研究人群的16.1%。在死后时间少于24小时的人群中,27.7%的案例检测到了外部泡沫。所有18起有外部泡沫的事件估计死后时间均少于24小时。
在我们的研究中,外部泡沫仅出现在死后时间少于24小时的淡水溺水案例中。基于这一发现,外部泡沫的存在可能作为估计淡水溺水死亡时间的一个附加指标。