Valoración de los cambios histológicos pulpares para la determinación de la data de la muerte

Abstract

The determination of the time of death is a fundamental problem in forensic medicine and something that is required in order to clarify the circumstances surrounding a death. Many macroscopic and microscopic methods – some more reliable than others – are used to estimate this time. This article proposes a methodology based on postmortem changes in dental pulp tissue. Variations in the tissue within the pulp chamber of 122 multirooted teeth after the blood flow had stopped were analysed at different time intervals. We assumed that because the pulp tissue is separated from other body tissues by the dentine, the post-mortem change process would be similar to that which occurs after the blood flow stops. After being extracted and prefixed, the teeth were prepared for conventional microscopic observation (sectioning, fixing and staining). The main results observed were a gradual loss of the pulp parenchyma and its organisation, in accordance with the amount of time that elapsed (hours, days, weeks). The structural variation in the organic substance of the pulp chamber proved to be a useful element for determining the time of death during the first post-mortem interval.