Kaliszan Michał, Daniłowicz-Szymanowicz Ludmiła, Kempa Maciej, Tomczak Ewa, Krzyżanowska Marta, Jankowski Zbigniew, Raczak Grzegorz
Department of Forensic Medicine, Medical University of Gdansk, ul. Dębowa 23, Gdańsk, 80-204, Poland.
Department of Cardiology and Electrotherapy, Medical University of Gdansk, ul. Smoluchowskiego 17, Gdańsk, 80-214, Poland.
J Forensic Sci. 2019 Sep;64(5):1551-1554. doi: 10.1111/1556-4029.14037. Epub 2019 Feb 21.
The case of a 69-year-old man, equipped with an ICD and suffering from several chronic cardiac diseases, who died in a car accident, was presented. We analyzed electrogram records from the ICD explanted from the body during the autopsy, which showed that the driver had suffered from malignant ventricular arrhythmia-ventricular fibrillation (VF). A thorough analysis of the details of the accident, as well as the timing of VF and the rhythm observed after the discharge of the ICD showed that the direct cause of the accident was the episode of arrhythmia resulting in a loss of consciousness. Therefore, the presented case illustrates the usefulness of postmortem analysis of electrogram records from ICDs in the reconstruction of road traffic accidents. In such cases, if the victims are implanted with ICDs, it should be a routine procedure performed by forensic pathologists.
