In this study, we tested the function of a replica of the over 500-year-old original of the famous Franconian Imperial Knight Gotz von Berlichingen’s first “iron hand”, which we reconstructed by computer-aided design (CAD) and recently printed using a multi-material 3D printer. In different everyday tasks, the artificial hand prosthesis proved to be remarkably helpful. Thus, the hand could hold a wine glass, some grapes, or a smartphone. With a suitable pencil, even writing was possible without any problem. Although for all these functions the healthy other hand was necessary to assist at the beginning, the artificial hand is an astonishing mechanical aid with many possibilities. Therefore, in certain cases, the non-invasive approach of a passive mechanical hand replacement, which is an individual, quick and cheap solution due to modern 3D printing, may always be worth considering also for today’s requirements.
Im Jahr 1504 verlor der deutsche Ritter Gottfried („Gotz“) von Berlichingen seine rechte Hand. Schon wahrend seiner Genesung dachte er daran, die Hand zu ersetzen, und beauftragte bald darauf die erste Handprothese, die sogenannte „Eiserne Hand“. Jahre spater wurde die aufwandigere zweite „Eiserne Hand“ gebaut. Wir haben die erste Prothese auf der Basis fruherer Literaturdaten von Quasigroch (1982) mit Hilfe von 3-D Computer-Aided Design (CAD) rekonstruiert. Dazu mussten einige Abmessungen angepasst und ein paar Annahmen fur das CAD-Modell gemacht werden. Die historische passive Prothese des Gotz von Berlichingen ist fur die moderne Neuroprothetik interessant, da sie eine Alternative zu komplexen invasiven Brain-Machine-Interface-Konzepten darstellen konnte, wo diese Konzepte nicht notwendig, moglich oder vom Patienten gewunscht sind.
130 cases of prisoner deaths in Hamburg were examined in a doctoral thesis providing the basis for this study (P e t ers en 2016). Compared with previous assessments, prisoners live longer and are slightly more likely to die of natural causes, the most common cause of death being heart attack. Also, medical care in prisons has significantly improved - some prisoners in fact receive better treatment while incarcerated as compared to outside of prison. The suicide risk, however, remains 8 times as high for inmates compared to the general population. 55 % of these suicides take place within the first 30 days of pre-trial detention. Most of the suicides in Hamburg prisons (26 %) occur on Sundays. In previous studies this number was lower at 15 % (Granzow 1996) and nationwide it was at 20 % (Bennef eld-Kersten 2012). The paper also provides 18 recommendations to prevent future suicides of prisoners. Overall, the rate of prison suicides is slightly decreasing. Prisoners today live longer and mostly die of lifestyle diseases, particularly heart attacks. However, they are still significantly more likely to take their own life than individuals living in freedom.
Coronary bypass grafting is a routine procedure in heart surgery, which can now also be performed using a minimally invasive technique on the beating heart. In the presented case, a 55-year-old man died two days after bypass surgery. His condition had deteriorated post-operatively over 2 days until he finally died from multi-organ failure and cardiogenic shock. Autopsy revealed a fatal haemorrhage into the chest cavities from a small tear in the bypass and acute myocardial infarction. The haemorrhage had not been noticed in the hospital. Postoperative haemorrhage is a common complication after this type of surgery, which occurs in about 1-2 % of cases.
Cases in which several persons who died from an unnatural cause are found together are often difficult. It is necessary to exclude homicide committed by another person and to clarify whether the deaths are the result of a homicide-suicide or a joint suicide of persons wishing to die. Two cases in which couples with gunshot wounds to the head had been found lifeless in their homes are presented. In both cases, the deceased were of advanced ages and suffered from severe pre-existing diseases. Due to the circumstances at the scene, the results of the investigations and the autopsies as well as the suicide notes found, a double suicide was assumed in both cases. The husbands killed themselves after shooting their wives. Based on the presented cases the so-called double suicide and the need for a thorough investigation of the death scene with the problem of differentiating it from homicide-suicide and double homicide are discussed.
The Frankfurt model is described to exemplify the teaching and training concepts implemented at the Institute of Legal Medicine in Frankfurt am Main up to 2015. The Frankfurt model describes a comprehensive, networked teaching system aiming at an interdisciplinary training. Interdisciplinarity is a domain of forensic medicine as a broadly diversified subject related to various scientific disciplines. The importance of the medicolegal triad (research, teaching, services) rooted in the university setting, on which the success of this interdisciplinary teaching and training concept is based, is illustrated. Sufficient funding is required to maintain this medicolegal triad, and the consequences of potential reductions due to fiscal reasons are outlined.
When human bones are found it is important to establish whether they belong to one or more individuals. Osteological examinations assessing morphological characteristics provide an important tool, in particular for a first appraisal. In the reported case, an isolated, toothless mandible that had been found in a river appeared to be too large to match a skull found in the same context. Moreover, shortly before and after the mandible had been found, two headless corpses had been recovered from the same river. The initial conclusion was, therefore, that the mandible and the skull belonged to different individuals. Forensic DNA-testing confirmed, however, that the mandible, the skull, and one of the bodies were from the same individual, who could later be identified through DNA comparison with two biological children. So far, current knowledge has only been that mandibles may erroneously be considered too small by morphological assessment to be compatible with a found skull, as reported in a paper by Reichs (1989). The reported case establishes that the opposite phenomenon may also occur. The findings show that more extensive studies investigating the correlation between mandible and cranial base in a moden population seem to be necessary.
Complex suicides represent only a small number of all suicides. The case of a 27-year-old man who drove his car against a tree is presented. The emergency physician diagnosed a stab to the thorax. A kitchen knife was found on the rear seats of the vehicle. Autopsy revealed death by exsanguination due to perforation of the left cardiac ventricle. Blunt force injuries caused by the collision were also found.
Bite marks are rarely seen in forensic medical examinations. In most cases one can easily differentiate whether a bite mark is of human or animal origin due to the arched shape and crushed character of human bite marks. From a forensic point of view it is more interesting whether a dental imprint has been caused by an adult or a child, because children are often abused for a defensive statement. Two cases of bite injuries in children are presented. In the first case, a two-month-old infant was presented by pediatricians. The second case deals with a one-year-old boy who had allegedly been bitten several times by a two-year-old girl in a nursery school. A comparison could be performed between the bite mark impressions on the victim's skin (based on photographic documentation) and dental imprints of single teeth measuring the tooth width on the one hand and the intercanine distance on the other hand with the help of modeling wax plates. This procedure showed good correlations between the bite marks on the victim and the dental status of the biter. Especially for taking bite impressions on children, modeling wax plates are a simple, fast and cheap alternative to dental impression-taking.
After the discovery of skeletonized human remains, the estimation of stature is an important element of the so-called "biological profile". Typically, long bone lengths are used in regression formulas. If long bones are not available, predictions of stature cannot be made. Human skulls are often the subject of forensic osteological examination, sometimes even detached. Therefore, it seems reasonable to search for skull measurements that have a sufficiently good correlation to stature. The aim of the study presented was to measure odonto-stomatological parameters using post-mortem CT data to check whether the esti- mation of stature was possible on this basis. Three classic tooth dimensions (MD, BL, ZL), two diagonal tooth dimensions (MBDL, DBML) first described by Lund and Mörnstad in 1999, two tooth dimensions defined for the first time in this study (MKDO, DKMO), the mesiodistal index (MDS) and also the palatal arch dimensions (arch length, arch width, molar length and dental length) - each at maxilla and mandible - were digitally measured on a total of 799 teeth of 48 virtual 3-D-reconstructed skulls (33 males and 15 females). For most of the aforementioned measurements no statistically significant relation to stature was found. There were positive correlations by Pearson at a significance level of 99 % (2-sided) at three measurements: ZL 15, MKDO 14 and MKDO 15. Positive correlations by Pearson at a significance level of 95 % (2-sided) could be determined for eight measurements, but an applicable regression formula could not be calculated for any of the parameters. Despite a statistical correlation of a few teeth parameters with body length, they must be considered unsuitable for estimating stature.
A drinking study on the pharmacokinetics of the typical grappa congeners 2-butanol and 2-butanone (methyl ethyl ketone) was performed. It was expected that the concentration ratio might provide a means to estimate the time of ingestion of a grappa beverage. Twelve subjects drank a volume of the grappa "Vecchio di Prosecco" (42 vol%) to reach a blood alcohollevel of 1.20 %o. In the congener analyses in serum, a median 2-butanol concentration of 0.79 mg/1 (range 0.45-1.34 mg/1) and of 1.01 mg/I (0.44-1.62 mg/1) for 2-butanone were measured. The concentration-time curve was biphasic starting with a slow and plateau-like elimination. However, considerable inter-individual differences were observed. Only in 3 subjects, a 2-butanol : 2-butanone ratio below 1 suggested ingestion within the last 6 hours. The majority of the subjects exhibited higher concentrations of 2-butanone than of 2-butanol such that the ratio was always smaller than 1. According to the present results the concentrations of 2-butanol and 2-butanone or their ratio do not provide a reliable basis to draw conclusions on the time of grappa ingestion.
The article reports on the case of a premature and stillborn child. As a first step it had to be clarified whether the child had been alive. The pathological examination of the placenta performed after autopsy could prove a retroplacental hematoma as the cause of death. Furthermore the autopsy revealed a severe skull deformity that would probably have made the survival of the child impossible.
Two rare causes of iatrogenic pericardial effusions are presented. In the first case, a 61-year-old woman who had undergone laparoscopic surgery for a diaphragmatic hernia was resuscitated without success the next day. As cause of death circulatory failure as a result of post-operative pulmonary embolism was reported. Autopsy results showed that the pericardium and the heart had been sewn to the diaphragm. The suture was torn from the tissue, which caused a hemorrhage into the pericardium and the chest cavity, so that death was diagnosed to be due to cardiac tamponade and hemothorax after an iatrogenic heart injury. In the second case, a 62-year-old man who had developed a massive incisional hernia after treatment of an abdominal gunshot wound underwent open herniotomy with mesh repair. Postoperatively, the man complained about increasing pain and shortness of breath. He was transferred to another hospital for further assessment, where a cardiac tamponade was diagnosed. Autopsy results showed that three of the plastic staples used to fix the mesh had perforated the diaphragm and the pericardium thus injuring the adjacent right ventricle with subsequent perforation and development of a hemopericardium.
Depending on the type of offence, the medico-legal examination of victims of violence for the purpose of collecting evidence in criminal proceedings requires prompt physical examination of the victim, the exact description and, wherever possible, photographic documentation of the injuries and their forensically correct interpretation. Examination, documentation and assessment have to meet minimum standards. In addition it must be ensured that the examiner or expert has an independent organisational, administrative and financial status. An independent expert must not be an organisational part of the police force, the public prosecution and the court. Legal regulations have to make sure that the expert cannot be influenced "through official channels". His or her financial independence must make attempted bribery at least improbable. The independence of the expert is particularly important, if persons become victims of violence while they are under the custody of the state, especially the police, in prisons and after compulsory commitment to a psychiatric hospital.
