Matricide and psychiatric evaluation: An update.

Matricide is an infrequent crime that has often raised to the suspicion that the offender could suffer from a pathological mental status. Although it is hard to establish a relationship between mental disorders and specific forms of homicide, several studies suggest that matricide offender frequently suffers from schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders. Aim of the study was to review the literature in order to explore epidemiologic and psychiatric characteristics of matricide offenders with a focus on the cause of death and crime circumstances.

Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome: About a Postnatal Death.

Background: Hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) is a congenital heart disease that is associated with high mortality rates in the early neonatal period and during surgical treatments. This is mainly due to missed prenatal diagnosis, delayed diagnostic suspicion, and consequent unsuccessful therapeutic intervention.

Case Report: twenty-six hours after birth, a female newborn died of severe respiratory failure.

MALDI-TOF Mass Spectrometry Analysis and Human Post-Mortem Microbial Community: A Pilot Study.

Introduction: The human post-mortem microbiome (HPM) plays a major role in the decomposition process. Successional changes in post-mortem bacterial communities have been recently demonstrated using high throughput metagenomic sequencing techniques, showing great potential as a post-mortem interval (PMI) predictor. The aim of this study is to verify the application of the mass spectrometry technique, better known as MALDI-TOF MS (matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry), as a cheap and quick method for microbe taxonomic identification and for studying the PM microbiome.

Electrocution Stigmas in Organ Damage: The Pathological Marks.

Background: Diagnostic criteria for electrocution related death are still a challenge in forensic pathology and it seems that the electrical mark is the only reliable evidence.

Methods: A comparison of histological and morphological findings of skin and internal organs from an autopsy series of electrocution deaths with those mostly reported in literature as representative for electrocution.

Results: The morphological changes of heart, brain and other main internal organs are still unspecific.

A Descriptive Study on Causes of Death in Hospitalized Patients in an Acute General Hospital of Southern Italy during the Lockdown due to Covid-19 Outbreak.

(1) Background: All deaths that occurred in a hospital of Southern Italy ("San Giuseppe Moscati" Hospital of Avellino) with medium jurisdiction (up to 425,000 citizens approximately) in the period from 9 March to 4 May 2020 were analyzed. The primary endpoint of the study was to analyze the causes of death in the period study. Secondary endpoints included: (1) the assessment of overall mortality in the emergency period compared with the same period of the past years (2018-2019) in the jurisdiction area; (2) the assessment of the amounts of deaths with positive and negative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) of nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabs; (3) the frequency of clinical and radiological features consistent with Covid-19 infection in negative RT-PCR cases.

Snakebite Envenoming a Challenging Diagnosis for the Forensic Pathologist: A Systematic Review.

Snakebite envenoming (SBE) is a public health issue in developing countries. The estimated annual global incidence of snakebites is about 5.4 million snakebites per year, resulting from 1.

Isolated Right Atrial Rupture From Blunt Chest Trauma in Motor Vehicle Collisions: Mechanisms of Injury and Outcomes.

Isolated right atrial rupture after nonpenetrating blunt chest trauma is rare, and very few cases have been reported in the literature. Isolated right atrial rupture is a diagnostic challenge in these patients, who are mostly victims of motor vehicle collisions. The clinical presentation is heterogeneous and can vary depending on rupture location and size.

[Biennial experience with aortic valve homografts prepared and preserved in our bank and implanted on the left ventricular outflow tract in adult patients].

A homograft bank was established in 1986 at the Institute of Cardiac Surgery of the Second University of Naples. Since then 163 aortic and pulmonary homografts have been collected, and mostly used for right ventricular outflow tract reconstruction (69 at our Institution and 14 at other Italian Centers). In March 1991 free aortic homografts were first implanted in the left ventricular outflow tract in adult patients with aortic valve and/or root disease, for a total of 15 implantations with a follow-up ranging between 3 and 19 months (mean 10 months).