Dilemma for Autopsy Surgeon

Introduction:

Forensic medicine is best learned by a judicious combination of theoretical and practical knowledge. A good forensic expert is one who has not merely a vast experience in conducting autopsies, but one who has trained himself to make precise and correct interpretation of the findings. One must not allow dogmatism or inflexibility to cloud one’s judgment. A self- opinionated expert is a poor expert. There are several inherent pitfalls that must be avoided in the course of medicolegal autopsies which can lead to erroneous or fallacious conclusions. Every forensic pathologist must familiarize himself with these postmortem artefacts that are liable to misinterpretation. Postmortem Artefacts are due to any change caused or features introduced in a body after death. The artefacts are physiologically unrelated to the natural state of the body or tissues or the disease process, to which the body was subjected to before death. Ignorance and misinterpretation of such postmortem artefacts leads to:...

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