Sudden Death Caused by Positional Asphyxia Related to Forensic and Clinical Medicine

Abstract

Positional asphyxia refers to a special type of mechanical asphyxia, which can lead to death under severe circumstances. It can be found in clinical practice and medico-legal expertise such as sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) in the sleeping, unexplained sudden death in alcoholics and seniors of weak physiques, as well as violence-related sudden death in special physical position. However, the death cases of positional asphyxia were failed to be given more focuses in clinical practice. Most of the cases associated with positional asphyxia are mainly subject to forensic medical identification, and the death mechanism and the expertise standard have been discussion in forensic medicine. But both clinical medicine or forensic medicine, positional asphyxia can be classified into violence and non-violence, having some associated high-risk factors such as age, temulence, heart disease etc. Therefore, it is very important to correctly identify the causes and related risk factors of positional asphyxia and to make scientific clinical diagnosis and correct forensic experts opinions for correctly judging the cause of death of victims.