Advances in forensic diagnosis of electric shock death in the absence of typical electrical marks

Abstract

Electrical injury is a relatively uncommon but potentially devastating form of multi-system injury with high morbidity and mortality. In common electric injury cases, it is usually difficult to find characteristic changes of electric injury in major organs by using routine histopathological test methods unless there are landmark traces of electric injury, known as electric marks. How to determine electric shock death, especially in the absence of typical electrical marks on the body surface in some cases (which account for about two-thirds of electric injury cases), remains a challenging problem in forensic practice. Our summary shows that many current related studies have focused their efforts to find characteristic histopathological changes in major organs of the body caused by electric injury. Based on the results obtained through comparison of the literature, we find that it may be more urgent and important to find the optimal autopsy or sampling sites in cases with no typical electric marks, knowing that these sites may often reflect the most significant histopathological changes of electric injury, for instance anatomy and sampling of the anterior wrist and the medial malleolus in cases involving the hand-to-foot electric circuit pathway. In this article, we make a summary of advances in identification methods of electric injury, hoping that it could provide some new insights for further research in this field.

Keywords: Electric death; Electric injury; Electrical marks; Forensic pathology; Identification methods; Sampling site.