Citation

Cecchi R, Cipolloni L, Sestili C, Aromatario M, Ciallella C. Int. J. Legal Med. 2011; 126(3): 473-476.

Affiliation

Department of anatomical, histological, medico-legal and locomotor apparatus sciences, Forensic Medicine section, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy, rossana.cecchi@uniroma1.it.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s00414-011-0643-9

PMID

22072311

Abstract

Bone embolism is a very rare event that usually occurs in trauma-induced septic bone lesions, after bone surgery or after bone marrow transplantation, and normally remains silent. To our knowledge, there are no previous reports of bone embolism after a gunshot to the head. We describe a case of pulmonary embolism associated with bone fragments after a gunshot to the head in which bone fragments surrounded by leukocytes, interstitial and intra-alveolar oedema and haemorrhage around the embolised vessels, leukostasis and fat and bone marrow embolism suggest that the survival time from the gunshot was sufficiently long to allow changes in lung microcirculation and lung tissue.

Language: en