Forensic analysis of cervical spine and spinal injury in Asahikawa Medical University: A study of cervical spine and spinal injury in exogeneous death patients

Abstract

Many out-of-hospital cardiac arrest cases are diagnosed as unknown exogenous death.

Forensic autopsy is required to determine the cause of unknown exogeneous death regardless the prevalence of autopsy imaging in recent years. Spine and spinal cord injury (SCIs) due to polytrauma might be frequently missed by the feeble appearance of outside surface injury. We retrospectively reviewed 546 cases of unknowm exogenous death, where forensic autopsy was performed, in forensic medicine class in Asahikawa Medical University from 2014 April to 2017 December. There were 44 SCIs cases out of all 546 forensic autopsy cases (8.1%) of which 12 cases (27%) presented fatal SCIs (high cervical spinal cord injury). Furthermore, SCIs were frequently missed in most cases who were transported to a hospital after the trauma. Fatal SCIs might be caused when the external traumatic force is applied in the head and neck area. The possibility of SCIs should be considered at all times during the initial severe traumatic medical examination or when cause-of-death analysis are conducted.