Medico-legal study on prediction of the interval between alcohol intoxication and death

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The possibility of prediction of the interval between the commencing or finishing time and death was surveyed by measuring alcohol concentrations of several body fluids obtained from the autopsy cases examined during the period starting April, 1999 up to and including March, 2003, based upon the principle that absorption, distribution and discharge of ethanol are unequal in the body fluids. The correlation coefficients of ethanol concentrations amongst the cadaveric body fluids of 85 intoxicated fatal cases were as follows; heart blood / femoral venous blood: 0.923, heart blood / urine: 0.848, heart blood / cerebrospinal fluid: 0.926, heart blood / vitreous humor: 0.796, femoral venous blood / urine: 0.860, femoral venous blood / cerebrospinal fluid: 0.905, femoral blood / vitreous humor: 0.905, urine / cerebrospinal fluid: 0.772, urine / vitreous humor: 0.902, cerebrospinal fluid / vitreous humor: 0.872. The tendency that the ratios of blood alcohol concentration(BAC)/vitreous humor alcohol concentration(VHAC) were lower in the cases with shorter intervals between alcohol intoxication and death, whereas they were higher in the cases with the longer intervals, as it was expected. The estimation of the period between alcohol intoxication and death depends on the hypothesis that comparison of two parameters, 1)clear difference of alcohol concentration in several body fluid and 2)clear information about the time of starting or ending alcohol intake, enables the prediction of the interval. Though it was not successful to create nomograms for predicting the interval within a limited period in this study for unexpectedly small number of cases with necessary information, it is expected that a more accurate conclusion will be obtained by a further survey with much more proper cases in the same method.