Postmortem pancreatic autolysis as a histological marker of early postmortem interval: a forensic autopsy study in a tropical setting

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate postmortem pancreatic autolysis as a histological marker of the early postmortem interval (PMI) in routine forensic autopsy, with particular emphasis on regional differences within the pancreas and application in a tropical setting. Methods: We studied 30 forensic autopsy cases with known PMI <24 h. From each pancreas, tissue from the head, body, and tail was sampled, fixed in formalin, processed routinely, and stained with hematoxylin–eosin. For each region, the proportion of parenchyma exhibiting characteristic autolytic changes was visually estimated as the percentage of autolysis. Spearman's correlation and simple linear regression were used to assess associations between PMI and autolysis. Results: The PMI ranged from 1 to 17 h (mean 6.4 h). PMI showed a significant positive correlation with autolysis in the head (ρ = 0.508), body (ρ = 0.561), tail (ρ = 0.566) and mean autolysis (ρ = 0.535) (all p ≤ 0.002). Correlations were stronger in traumatic deaths than in non-traumatic deaths. Simple linear regression with PMI as the predictor explained 19.5 % of the variance in mean percent autolysis (R² = 0.195). Autolysis was first appreciable at approximately 2 h postmortem, and >50 % autolysis was not observed below 5 h. Conclusions: Pancreatic autolysis provides useful information in the early PMI but lacks precision as a stand-alone estimator. It is best used as a practical histological adjunct within a multimodal, evidence-based approach to PMI estimation, especially in warm, humid environments.