Unusual autopsy finding: Simon’s bleeding
Abstract
Objective: To determine whether or not hanging had taken place before or after the death of the victim is quite important in the identification of criminal cases pretended to be suicidal attempts. Material and Methods:Evidence for Simon’s bleeding was searched in cases included in the study group after retracting soft tissue and organs away from the field of interest for full exposure of the region of lumbar spinal veretebrae without macroscopic grading of the severity of bleeding, and determining the lumbar level of bleeding. The cases autopsied in Bursa Morgue Department between 2009 and 2011 were retrospectively investigated and evaluated.
Results: A total of 848 cases (664 males, and 184 females, male/female ratio, 3.6 : 1) were included in the study. A total of 270 (31.8 %) cases had Simon’s bleeding. A significant difference in the frequency of Simon’s bleeding exists among various causes of death. A 28.5 % (n = 77) of the cases with Simon’s bleeding were in the group with hanged death cases (p < 0.001). Conclusion:Splinter bleedings identified originally by Simon on the ventral, and later dorsal aspects of the spinal disci in cases of hanging were also observed later in deaths not related to hanging, however it was concluded that these types of bleeding could not be detected in cases of postmortem hanging. When we evaluated all groups, the results we obtained do not support the assertion that the incidence of Simon’s bleeding decreases with aging. Instead, when compared with all other groups, the incidence
of Simon’s bleeding was also higher in cases of hanging with the highest mean age.
Downloads
The Author transfers to the Publisher (Zdravniški vestnik/Slovenian Medical Journal) all economic copyrights following form Article 22 of the Slovene Copyright and Related Rights Act (ZASP), including the right of reproduction, the right of distribution, the rental right, the right of public performance, the right of public transmission, the right of public communication by means of phonograms and videograms, the right of public presentation, the right of broadcasting, the right of rebroadcasting, the right of secondary broadcasting, the right of communication to the public, the right of transformation, the right of audiovisual adaptation and all other rights of the author according to ZASP.
The aforementioned rights are transferred non-exclusively, for an unlimited number of editions, for the term of the statutory
The Author can make use of his work himself or transfer subjective rights to others only after 3 months from date of first publishing in the journal Zdravniški vestnik/Slovenian Medical Journal.
The Publisher (Zdravniški vestnik/Slovenian Medical Journal) has the right to transfer the rights, acquired parties without explicit consent of the Author.
The Author consents that the Article be published under the Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 (attribution-non-commercial) or comparable licence.