Postmortem Biochemistry. Review

Abstract

Justification: There are several occasions in which the forensic doctor requires auxiliary post-mortem biochemistry to obtain information that allows him to determine the cause of death, especially in those whose pathologies do not present morphological changes that indicate which were the physiopathological changes involved in the process of death. It is estimated that its application could contribute to solve up to 10% of the natural deaths that are studied in the forensic routine; however, despite the enormous potential of this discipline, it has not yet been widely applied. Objective: present some applications of postmortem biochemistry, its limitations; as well as providing a brief summary of what was recently published. Methodology: The search was done in pub med and google academic, using the terms, post mortem biochemistry and tanatochemistry. Results: It was found that, despite the fact that postmortem biochemistry is a discipline that dates back to the 40s, few advances have been made due to factors that limit the interpretation of results, among which the lack of values of reference and the scarce knowledge of the dynamics of postmortem change of the metabolites. Conclusions: Despite the enormous applications that, from the theoretical conceptualization, postmortem biochemistry may have, in the practical application it has been limited by several factors, which is why more research is required in this regard.