Includes two new chapters, "Deaths in Nursing Homes" and "Sudden Death During or Immediately After a Violent Struggle"
Covers more techniques and principles regarding toxicology, including new drugs
Expands coverage of motor vehicle accidents and related injuries
Updates DNA information
Includes more discussion of head injuries with etiology of skull fractures

Medicolegal investigation of death is the most crucial and significant function of the medical examiner within the criminal justice system. The medical examiner is primarily concerned with violent, sudden, unexpected, and suspicious deaths and is responsible for determining the cause and manner of death, identifying the deceased, determining the approximate time of death and injury, collecting evidence from the body, issuing the death certificate, and documenting these events through an official autopsy report. The basis of the medicolegal investigation is forensic pathology.

Written for both medical and investigative professionals, Forensic Pathology, Second Edition presents an overview of medicolegal investigative systems. Completely updated, the book examines investigative techniques and procedures that lead to obtaining accurate conclusions of death by homicide, accident, or suicide.

Table of contents:

Medicolegal Investigative Systems
Time of Death
Deaths Due to Natural Disease
Wounds Due to Blunt Trauma
Blunt Trauma Injuries of the Trunk and
Extremities
Trauma to the Skull and Brain: Craniocerebral Injuries
Wounds Due to Pointed and Sharp, Edged Weapons
Asphyxia
Deaths Due to Motor Vehicles
Airplane Crashes
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome
Neonaticide, Infantcide, and Child Homicide
Deaths Due to Fire
Carbon Monoxide Poisoning
Drowning
Electrocution
The Effects of Heat & Cold: Hyperthermia & Hypthermia
Rape
Emboli Eue to Gas, Fat, and Amniotic Fluid
Topics in Forensic Pathology
Deaths in Nursing Homes
Sudden Death During or Immediately After a Violent Struggle
Interpretative Toxicology: Drug Abuse and Drug Deaths