Citation

Patonay BC, Oliver WR. J. Forensic Sci. 2010; 55(4): 1123-1125.

Affiliation

Pitt County Memorial Hospital, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, 2100 Statonsburg Road, PO Box 6028, Greenville, NC 27835, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, American Society for Testing and Materials, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1556-4029.2010.01393.x

PMID

20384915

Abstract

An unexpected infant death is usually investigated with a complete autopsy. If evidence of prior trauma is found at autopsy in these cases, suspicion is raised for nonaccidental trauma. In a young infant, the residua of trauma received during birth has the potential to be incorrectly interpreted as nonaccidental trauma. We report a the findings of a 4 1/2-month-old-infant that died unexpectedly with a healing linear skull fracture and a circular lesion over the calvarium found at autopsy. Though this lesion was concerning, the remainder of the autopsy and the histological findings did not support a diagnosis of recent trauma. Review of the literature describing birth injuries made the diagnosis of healing, residual birth trauma more convincing in this case.

Language: en