A traffic accident resulting in a degloving injury of the passenger: Case report and biomechanical theory

Abstract

A degloving injury is likely to cause minimal to extensive loss of skin with variable amounts of deep tissues loss through a defence mechanism or trauma. This injury usually occurs in vehicle-pedestrian accident victims who are run over, and less commonly one in a vehicle's passenger. In our case, three soldiers had an accident while they were travelling in a military vehicle during a reconnaissance mission. After the accident, the vehicle started to roll over several times., and the soldier who was sitting on the front passenger seat was thrown away from the vehicle and died several minutes later. At the autopsy a complete detachment of the skin of left leg and foot was observed, showing the typical features of degloving injuries. According to our reconstruction, three different forces were applied simultaneously to the body, resulting in a severe degloving injury to the leg and the foot. These methods presented here were applicable for the cause of death diagnosis in medico-legal autopsy.