On a case of cardiac death (coronary thrombosis) of a subject riding a moped

The forensic medical problems regarding the exact reconstruction of an event (the way it happened) to identify the cause of death and therefore form an opinion on the possible responsibility of a third subject in the sphere of a road accident, are the starting point for this paper. The Authors report the case a man aged 43 found unconscious at the side of an urban road, lying on the ground with a moped baside him. medical personnel of the 118 emergency service were called and after attempting reanimation for 40 minutes pronunced the man death. The event occurred in the absence of eye witnesses. The findings at the autopsy examination were, on external examination, attributable to traumatic-contusive wounding: excoriations in the head area, on the trunk and on the lower limbs. There were some findings indicative of the reanimation manoeuvres, the mark of a needle puncture in the bend of the left elbow. On opening the body, findings of importance for the ends of a forensic medical opinion on the cause of death were cardiac findings indicative of pathologies of that organ, both acute (occlusive right coronary thrombosis) and chronic (coronary sclerosis, myocardiosclerosis and left ventricular myocardial hipertrohy) with associated terminal pictures of pulmonary oedema, cerebral oedema and acute polyvisceral haematic stasis. Thus, there were no internal findings of traumatic origin that could be associated eith the road accident. The histological investigation confirmed acute coronary thrombosis and made it possible to identify a histomorphological picture of acute myocardial ischemia., localised in the posterior left ventricular seat. To complete this diagnostic procedure, it was therefore possible to identify the cause of death as an acute myocardial infarction from coronary thrombosis and therefore exclude a role in the causation of death of exogenous lesions in this specific case of a traumatic contusive nature (road accident) as an epi-phenomenon in a natural cardiac death.