Wounds and injuries
From Forensicmed
Introduction
Any doctor may be asked to examine a person who has been wounded, particularly in the Emergency Unit/ Trauma Unit setting.
In addition, forensic physicians and pathologists are frequently required to examine wounds in both the living and the dead.
The identification and description of wounds may have serious medico-legal implications at a later stage, and often after some considerable time has passed since the wounding.
It is therefore essential that different types of wounds can be correctly identified and described, with a full description being made in notes taken at the time of, or shortly after the examination (contemporaneous notes).
Studies have shown that doctors incorrectly identify common wounds and injuries, and even where they do correctly identify a wound type, they ascribe an incorrect 'mechanism' to that wound (i.e. incorrect differentiation between blunt force and sharp force injury).(Jones 2003 [1]; Reijnders et al 2005 [2]; Bajanowski et al 2001 [3]).
In general terms (lay and medical, but not legal), 'wound' and 'injury' are used interchangeably, and are used to describe tissue damage caused by;
- mechanical force resulting in blunt force trauma (punching, kicking, beating etc)
- sharp force trauma (stabbing etc)
- ballistic trauma (from firearms and blast trauma from explosives)
- other injurious agents, such as burns from electricity or chemicals etc
- human or animal bites
Links
References
- Jones R (2003), 'Wound and injury awareness amongst students and doctors', Journal of Clinical Forensic Medicine 10(4):231-4
- Reijnders UJL, van Baasbank MC, van der Wal G (2005), 'Diagnosis and interpretation of injuries: a study of Dutch General Practitioners', Journal of Clinical Forensic Medicine 12(6):291-5
- Bajanowski T, Karger B, Brinkmann B (2001), 'Scratched pustule or gunshot wound? A medical odyssey', Int J Legal Med 114:267-268
