Post-mortem lividity and its determinants – A cross sectional study

Abstract

A human body shows numerous changes following death, like cooling of body, stiffness of muscles, staining of body tissues,  putrefaction and many. These follow a particular timeline. These changes when observed and studied keenly, provides us with vital  information to achieve the objectives of any autopsies. Considering that postmortem changes may vary in different regions globally  with varying weather conditions, this study was aimed to study the post-mortem lividity and its determinants in the study region. The  present study was a prospective cross sectional description study conducted in mortuary of a tertiary care teaching hospital for a period  of 6 months. A total of 74 cases were observed during the study period. It was learnt that the post-mortem staining starts appearing as  small patches by 2 hours and coalesce to big patches by 9-12 hours. In maximum number of cases (95.94%) lividity appreciated at  posterior surface and depended areas of body. The post-mortem staining occurs slowly among death due to hemorrhage and shock. The  staining was fixed by 9-18 hours. Earliest time of fixation of post-mortem staining in our study was by 4 hours and while late fixation  observed beyond 21 hours following death. The post-mortem staining starts appearing as small patches by 2 hours and then coalesces  to big patches by 9-12 hours. The staining gets fixed by 9-18 hours. It was concluded that compared to other methods, the post mortem  staining assessment can be used as the most conventional, easy and quicker method for estimating the time since death.