Shintani-Ishida Kaori, Tsuboi Hajime, Ichioka Hiroaki, Ikegaya Hiroshi
Department of Forensic Medicine, Graduate School of Medical Science, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, Kyoto, Japan.
Department of Forensic Medicine, Graduate School of Medical Science, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, Kyoto, Japan.
Leg Med (Tokyo). 2018 Nov;35:69-72. doi: 10.1016/j.legalmed.2018.09.008. Epub 2018 Sep 26.
Fatal accidents during butane abuse frequently occur in Japan and in many countries around the world. Although analytical data about butane concentration in postmortem samples is being accumulated, when using the data to determine the cause of death, careful interpretation is required because the gas is easily diffused. Two fatal butane poisoning cases were encountered, and butane quantification of autopsy samples obtained from left and right heart blood, femoral blood, kidney, liver, lung, brain and fatty tissues was performed. In both cases, butane concentration in the left heart blood was lower than in the right heart blood or the femoral blood, despite gas inhalation. These findings may indicate that the deceased individuals interrupted gas inhalation and inhaled room air immediately before their death, therefore ruling out asphyxia due to anoxia as the mechanism of death. Case 1, which was suspected to be a not acute death, showed a very high butane concentration ratio of fatty tissues to femoral blood of over 70. Case 2 was considered an acute death, and the butane concentration ratio of fatty tissues to femoral blood was 8.2. These results are consistent with previously reported findings showing that much higher ratios of fatty tissues to blood are compatible with long survival time. In conclusion, the comparison of butane concentration among different samples, including left heart blood versus right heart blood and fatty tissues versus blood, is useful when interpreting the result of postmortem butane analysis to examine the mechanism of death and survival time.
在日本及世界上许多国家，丁烷滥用导致的致命事故屡见不鲜。尽管有关死后样本中丁烷浓度的分析数据不断积累，但在利用这些数据确定死因时，由于气体易扩散，需要谨慎解读。我们遇到了两例丁烷中毒致死的案例，并对取自左右心血液、股动脉血液、肾脏、肝脏、肺、脑和脂肪组织的尸检样本进行了丁烷定量分析。在这两例中，尽管吸入了气体，但左心血液中的丁烷浓度均低于右心血液或股动脉血液中的浓度。这些发现可能表明，死者在死亡前立即中断了气体吸入并吸入了室内空气，因此排除了缺氧窒息作为死亡机制的可能性。案例1疑似非急性死亡，其脂肪组织与股动脉血液中的丁烷浓度比极高，超过70。案例2被认为是急性死亡，其脂肪组织与股动脉血液中的丁烷浓度比为8.2。这些结果与先前报道的结果一致，即脂肪组织与血液的比例越高，存活时间越长。总之，在解读死后丁烷分析结果以研究死亡机制和存活时间时，比较不同样本（包括左心血液与右心血液以及脂肪组织与血液）中的丁烷浓度是有用的。
