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Anterior wrist and medial malleolus as the novel sites of tissue selection: a retrospective study on electric shock death through the hand-to-foot circuit pathway

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Abstract

Our previous work demonstrated that characteristic changes could occur in the anterior wrist and medial malleolus in electric deaths through the hand-to-foot electric circuit pathway in an electric shock rat model. However, whether the same phenomenon occurs in humans is unknown. The aim of the present retrospective study was to ascertain whether the anterior wrist and medial malleolus could also be selected as the promising and significant sites in electric death through the hand-to-foot circuit pathway. Nineteen human cases from the autopsy and one clinical survivor who sustained a severe electric shock through the hand-to-foot circuit pathway were analyzed. Additional ten autopsy patients who died from traffic accidents and sudden cardiac attacks were used as the control group. Histopathological changes in the soft tissues of the anterior wrist and medial malleolus in all autopsy patients, as well as the electric current pathway of the survivor, were observed. The results showed that the nuclear polarizations in the anterior wrist and medial malleolus soft tissues of the electric death were extremely noticeable as compared with the controls. The most severe electrical injury in the survivor occurred in the anterior wrist. These findings suggest that the soft tissues of the anterior wrist and/or the medial malleolus as the narrowest parts of the limbs could be used as the complementary sites for tissue selection and considered as necessary locations for examinations to assess the electric death in medicolegal identification.

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Acknowledgments

The authors appreciate the support from the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation (LQ14H230001) and the Science and Technology Planning Project of Zhejiang Province (2015C37130).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forensic Pathology, National Key Disciplines, Collaborative and Creative Center, Shantou University Medical College, Shantou, Guangdong Province, People’s Republic of China

    Guangtao Xu, Ruibing Su, Junyao Lv, Huan Gu, Xianxian Li, Jiang Gu & Xiaojun Yu

  2. Department of Forensic Pathology, Provincial Key Disciplines, Jiaxing University Medical College, Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, People’s Republic of China

    Guangtao Xu

  3. Department of Pathology, Jiaxing Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, People’s Republic of China

    Bo Hu

  4. Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Huan Gu

Authors
  1. Guangtao Xu
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  2. Ruibing Su
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  3. Junyao Lv
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  4. Bo Hu
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  5. Huan Gu
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  6. Xianxian Li
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  7. Jiang Gu
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  8. Xiaojun Yu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xiaojun Yu.

Ethics declarations

All experimental protocols were approved by the Ethics Committee for the use of human subjects of Shantou University Medical College (Shantou, China). The study was conducted in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. All forensic cases were offered by the Public Security Bureau of Shantou (Shantou, China), Chaozhou (Chaozhou, China), Jieyang (Jieyang, China), and Jiaxing (Jiaxing, China). The integrated pathological autopsy was performed by medicolegists and pathologists to inspect organs or tissues from the cranial cavity, chest-abdomen-pelvic cavity, spinal cord, anterior wrist, and medial malleolus. Written informed consent was obtained from the bereaved families.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Guangtao Xu and Ruibing Su contributed equally to this work.

Jiang Gu and Xiaojun Yu are joint senior authors on this work.

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Xu, G., Su, R., Lv, J. et al. Anterior wrist and medial malleolus as the novel sites of tissue selection: a retrospective study on electric shock death through the hand-to-foot circuit pathway. Int J Legal Med 131, 677–683 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-016-1527-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-016-1527-9

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