TRAUMA ANALYSIS : Blunt Trauma & Pattern Injury

Trauma Analysis

 Antemortem
o Healing
 Perimortem
o Greenstick
 Postmortem
o Staining (discoloration)

Trauma

 Serious shock or injury to the body from violence or accident

 Blunt force trauma – “non-penetrating” injuries resulting from an impact with a dull, firm
surface or object.

Types of fractures

 See online picture

o Comminuted (hard to heal, lots of pieces)
o Greenstick (strain lines, bending)
o Hairline/ incomplete
o Oblique
o Spiral (child abuse)
o Simple / transverse
o Impacted

Blunt force trauma

 Characterized by discontinuities and fracture lines

 Implement sometimes difficult to tell
o Baseball bat
o Rock
o Metal objects
o Parts of car in automobile crash
o Glass bottle
 Fractures usually emanate from point of impact
o Exception – Ribs
 Compression 0 point of tension
 Fractures take path of resistance
o Diastatic fractures
o Weak portion of bone
  Plastic deformation
o Bone is deformed from slow forces of blow

Falls – Wrists

 Colles / Smith Fracture

o Distal radius
o Mechanism
 Colles – fall on an extended outstretched hand with straight elbow
 Dorsal displacement
 Smith - Fall on a flexed hand
 Volar displacement
 Salter I or II Fracture

Review 2

 Sex (biological) vs. gender (social)

o Differences between sexes
o Pathologists vs. Anthropologists
o HOW DOES pathologist determine sex vs. anthropologist (bones v. flesh)
 Bones used
o Skull (brow ridge, mandible, shape of forehead, inion hook)/ pelvis (shape sciatic notch,
subpubic angle, sciatic notch)/ others (femoral head, ossification of ribs)
 Features
o Sex divisions
 Non-metric / Metric

Age

 Aging divisions (neonatal fetal, child, adult)

 Fetus aging methods (length of fetus -> look up rule)
 Child aging methods
o Epiphyseal union (fusion of long bones) order of fusion
o Dental eruption
 3 major molars (6, 12, 18 years old)
o Adult aging methods (metamorphic, pubic symphysis of young people with ridges,
fillowy – old people looks flat, bony growthys) (degenerative changes – dental loss,
osteoarthiritis)

Stature

 Methods
 o Formula – how developed (using known individuals)
o Reasons for errors – then and now (poor health, not fully descriptive,)
 Bones for estimation
o Order in Bio profile
o Long bones (femur)
o Know sex + ancestry

Ancestry

 Definitions
o Race/ Ancestry/ Ethnicity
o Variation (groups : European, African, Asian, Native-American) (clinal variation)
 Difficulties
 Body proportion laws
 Reasons we do it
 Databank/ FORDISC
 Bones used
o Features
 Non-metric/Metric

Identification

 Why ID?
 Positive (mtDNA, wallet/ tattoo) / Presumptive evidence (nuclear DNA, fingerprints, X-rays)
o Types
o Uses
 Idiosyncratic/ life history/ individualizing
o Trauma, devices, dental
 Comparisons
o Antemortem, postmortem
 Requirements

Forensic Art

 Types of art
o Uses
o Limits of each (subjective, not as scientific)
 Court
 Program
o Advantages
o Disadvantages

Military ID
  JPAC
o Looking to ID dead from which wars?
o Stands for? When did it start?
o Phases – 5
o Types of data used
 Example in class

Bone toxicology

 Areas of toxicology
 Previous studies
o Successful?
o Other areas of research that contributed?
 Drugs stored where?
 My study