Sharp‐force injuries are traditionally divided into stab, cut, and chop wounds. Stab wounds occur when a pointed object—usually a knife—penetrates into the body along its longitudinal axis. Cuts are caused by the slicing effect of a blade, and chop wounds are produced by blows with a sharp‐edged tool such as an axe or a machete. A morphological feature common to all wounds caused by sharp force is that the skin lesions have smooth, uncontused, more or less gaping margins. Fatal outcomes are mostly due to strong internal and/or external bleeding. Medicolegal investigations are performed for documentation of the injuries and interpretation as to how they came about and whether they were inflicted by the victims themselves or by another person. The group of self‐inflicted injuries includes completed and attempted suicides, dermal artifacts in patients with personality disorders, voluntary self‐damage among prisoners, those inflicted for the purpose of insurance fraud, and, finally, those for simulations of criminal offenses.
Characteristic findings help the forensic expert to differentiate between accident, suicide, and homicide. The presence of defense injuries is a certain indicator for an attack with a sharp instrument. The article gives a short overview of the circumstances, phenomena, and consequences of sharp‐force injuries. The text is illustrated by numerous photographs from forensic routine work.