Fracture Characteristics of Entrapped Head Impacts Versus Controlled Head Drops in Infant Porcine Specimens,,

Abstract

In many forensic cases, the job of forensic pathologists and anthropologists is to determine whether pediatric death is due to an abusive act or an accidental fall. The goal of this study was to compare the cranial fracture patterns generated on the parietal bone of a developing, infant porcine (pig, Sus scrofa) model by a controlled energy head drop onto a plate versus previous data generated by blunt force impact at the same energy onto the head constrained to a plate. The results showed that blunt force impacts on a head constrained to a rigid plate produces more fracture, but the same general pattern, as that for a head dropped onto the plate with the same level of impact energy. The study suggests that head constraint may be an important factor to consider in the evaluation of death causation for blunt force impacts to the pediatric skull.

How hard is hard enough? An investigation of the force associated with lateral blunt force trauma to the porcine cranium

“…Porcine bone is believed to be a suitable human bone substitute in fracture research and has been used as a model in many forensic studies [3,[15][16][17]34,35]. Isolated porcine heads were used in the current study.…”

“…It has previously been shown that rigid restraint of specimens during impact testing alters the stress distribution which results in a greater amount of fractures occurring as well as more fractures occurring remote to the site of impact [17,25,36]. The suspension system utilised in this study allowed for the free movement of the head after impact, limiting the chance of false fractures occurring due to restraint and thus ensuring that any trauma inflicted upon the specimen was due specifically to the impact.…”

“…Those studies which have investigated lateral impact biomechanics have utilised a variety of different methodologies including: static compression tests [11] (as cited in [7]), drop tests [3,[12][13][14][15][16][17], free fall tests [18][19][20], impacts with a pneumatic/ hydraulic piston [21,22], gas gun tests [23,24] and pendulum set ups [25]. Specimens utilised in these tests have also varied greatly, comprising of intact human cadavers, intact cadaver heads, dry human skulls and porcine specimens.…”

The Role of Interface on the Impact Characteristics and Cranial Fracture Patterns Using the Immature Porcine Head Model

“…Cranial fracture characteristics from the carpet impacts were also compared to the previously published low‐energy rigid interface head drop data of Powell et al. . As previously described, this study utilized impact energy levels approximately twice those of the Powell et al.…”

“…These energy levels were set to be approximately twice those of the Powell et al. study in order to generate a greater degree of cranial fracturing across the surfaces of varying compliance.…”