VENTURA F.

A recent Italian legal matter has raised the issue of fetal burial together with respect for maternal privacy and consent. Although the case was closed with a dismissal after the Public Prosecutor's request, it nevertheless raises important reflections on the issues of the moral value of the embryo, the mourning to be recognized to fetal death...

The authors analyse the suicidal phenomenon on the basis of the records collected at the Departmental Section of Legal Medicine, University of Genova, in the five-year period 2006-2010. Several variables (gender, age, mode, location and season of suicide) have been compared not only with previous researches performed in the same area but also...

AIM: We report a particular case study of the unexpected death of a 70-year-old caucasian man (affected by crohn's disease) due to the laceration of the ileocolic mesentery and its blood vessels following a colonoscopy procedure carried out only a few hours previously. MATERIAL OF THE STUDY: The autopsy showed that the lacerated blood vessels...

Background: Intracranial dural arteriovenous fistula (DAVF) consists of a meshwork of arteriovenous shunts. Drainage of the fistula may be into a dural sinus or directly into cortical veins. Rarely, dural arteriovenous fistulas drain exclusively into perimedullary veins. Prompt diagnosis is important, as the clinical course is potentially life...

Introduction and objectives. In Italy, four minors have died in the last year as a result of male circumcision (MC) procedures performed for cultural and religious reasons by unqualified persons in unhygienic conditions. Results and discussion. After illustrating the historical and ethical outlines of the moral admissibility of MC within a...

Biliary atresia (BA) is a fatal condition resulting in the lack of effective biliary drainage leading invariably to liver failure and cirrhosis within a year, and it is often lethal within a few months in the absence of corrective surgery or liver transplantation. In fact, BA is the most common indication for pediatric liver transplantation....

At the present time, when COVID-19 is disproportionately affecting black people in several countries, the Henrietta Lacks centennial year reminds us of our responsibility to strive for a fairer era of research. The cells of Henrietta Lacks, which were taken without her consent, have been reproduced billions of times for medical purposes. The...

In many circumstances the forensic pathologist can question whether the dead person experienced sepsis, which caused or contributed to death. The autopsy of a death related to sepsis is a difficult task for the forensic pathologist due to the lack of typical pathological factors as well as clinical and circumstantial information about death....

Functional neurological disorders can have different clinical manifestations, including coma, in the setting of an unknown etiology. In this article, we present a case of a young man affected by intellectual disabilities who, after a physical assault reported serious neurological alterations and a functional coma. This case shows how a...

Sudden death due to massive hemorrhage after a mini-invasive ambulatory diagnostic procedure is extremely rare. Fine-needle aspiration (FNA) of thyroid nodules is very safe, displaying a low rate of complications, all of which mild and often self-limiting. In few cases do these complications necessitate surgical decompression, and rarely does...

Scuba diving is one of the most common and practised water sport activities in Genoa, especially in the more recent years. Although scuba diving is generally considered a safe activity, this does not exclude the possibility of serious or fatal accidents from happening. This retrospective study investigates the case history of deaths resulting...

Decapitation is the severance of the head from the body. Generally, cases of decapitation are considered as homicidal, as there are very few cases of accidental and suicidal decapitation in the world. In homicides, decapitation could be the cause of death as well the result of a postmortem body dismemberment or mutilation in order, for example,...

The incidence of pulmonary embolism in spinal surgery is very rare, especially when a posterior approach is adopted and the mechanisms of this complication in this type of surgery is not completely clear. In this population of patients, in light of the known risk of serious hemorrhagic complications (above all, subdural hematoma), there are no...

The knowledge of the fauna associated with carrions and cadavers for a specific region plays a fundamental role in the estimation of the time since death in forensic cases. In the last years global warming and globalization have affected the insect species distribution. This phenomenon is affecting also the species of forensic interest...