Social Media and Medicolegal Death Investigation: Logged in…To the Morgue.

Social media (SM) represent a global consumer phenomenon with an exponential rise in usage within the last few years. The various applications and websites are relatively easy and fast to access, and the number of users increases continuously. SM are an incredible source of freely available, public information about their users.

Sudden Unexpected Deaths Due to Intracranial Meningioma: Presentation of Six Fatal Cases, Review of the Literature, and A Discussion of the Mechanisms of Death.

Deaths due to meningiomas are routinely diagnosed in clinical practice because this neoplasm tends to present with the typical progression of neurological deficits. On the other hand, sudden unexpected deaths due to meningiomas are rarely described in the literature. The study presents six fatal cases of previously undiagnosed intracranial meningiomas from the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office from 1998 to 2014.

Algor mortis: an erroneous measurement following postmortem refrigeration.

Determination of the time of death is one goal of medicolegal death investigations. Algor mortis has been used as a measure of the postmortem interval (PMI). We prospectively recorded the core temperatures of 19 adult bodies entering our morgue cooler and at 3, 6, and 9 h of refrigeration.

Errors on death certificates requiring amendments: the Broward County experience.

The medical examiner's office in Broward County is responsible for determining the cause and manner of death in cases falling under its jurisdiction and issuing death certificates on these decedents. Amendments are occasionally required to correct misinformation on death certificates or within the autopsy reports. The purpose of this study was to investigate the major causes for the amendments and to develop strategies to avoid future errors.

The accuracy of death certificate completion in a suburban community.

Background: Death certificates provide epidemiologists and other researchers with statistical data regarding causes of death within the community. When the certificates are filled out erroneously they provide misleading and inaccurate information. The aim of our investigation was to determine whether these certificates are being completed correctly by clinicians, how frequently errors are occurring, and what types of errors are being committed by the physicians in our county.

Suggested guidelines for the management of high-profile fatality cases.

Context: The investigation of high-profile fatalities poses special challenges to medical examiners and coroners. Most high-profile cases can be readily recognized early in the course of the investigation. Commonly encountered examples include police-related fatalities or deaths in custody, deaths of celebrities, and mass fatalities or clustered deaths (eg, serial killers).

Comamonas testosteroni meningitis in a homeless man.

We report a case of meningitis caused by Comamonas testosteroni in a 54-year-old, alcoholic, homeless man. He, as a pedestrian, was struck by a car and suffered multiple fractures of the facial bones including the left frontal sinus. Over the course of 2-week hospitalization, he was clinically diagnosed with multiple cerebral and cerebellar infarcts resulting in altered mental status.

Tibial insertion of the posterior cruciate ligament: a sagittal plane analysis using gross, histologic, and radiographic methods.

Purpose: The literature is imprecise regarding the ideal tibial site for the posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) placement. We detail anatomic and radiographic landmarks for consistent placement of graft fixation in PCL reconstruction.

Methods: Fourteen fresh-frozen cadaver knees were sectioned in the sagittal plane.

What is the best sample for determining the early postmortem period by on-the-spot flow cytometry analysis?

The level of degradation of DNA as a means for determining the time of death has been proposed as a valid adjunct to the classic thanatochronologic methods. The twofold aim of this work was to determine which organ might reveal both a correlation between the percentage of degradation of the DNA and the time lapse since death, and would be easiest to sample and yield the most reproducible results even in technically unfavorable situations such as on-the-spot investigations at the scene of death. A comparison of the spleen, blood, and liver showed that hepatic tissue best meets these specific needs because it shows a virtually linear correlation between the time elapsed since death and the level of degradation of the DNA, and it can easily be sampled at the scene of death by use of a common biopsy needle.