Drowning in forensic medicine – an overview and incidence during the 30 years period at the Department of Forensic Medicine and Criminalistics in Rijeka

Abstract

With an overview of deaths by drowning - a common accident based on asphyxia, we bring a unique perspective at the newer literature, bearing in mind our students, who we hope to bring closer to this obscure and hardly accessible topic. An interest in this topic can be explained, on the one hand, by epidemiology; namely, each year a large number of people, especially children dies in water; and, on the other hand, deaths by drowning often involve a spectrum of various topics from forensic medicine. While writing this article, we tried to make a clear distinction between drowned and bodies retrieved from water, to clarify the pathophysiological sequence of events of death by and present typical pathoanatomical findings. In addition to the classic drowning, we also show some lesser and equally interesting deaths involving submersion in water. Along with the facts listed in the international literature, we also bring the data that we have collected through the thirty-year documentation, which will make our work more interesting and valuable.