Vehicular homicide or cardiovascular event? The importance of the autopsy findings

Abstract

We present the case of a 61 years old woman who was hit by a car, resulting in fractures of the pubic bone, left ischium-pubis ramus and right femur, with need of hip replacement surgery. In the next days she was affected by two episodes of acute coronary syndrome, treated with coronary angioplasty surgery. After undergoing total hip replacement surgery an episode of asystole caused her death. A full autopsy showed coronary stenosis and chronic ischemic heart disease associated with a recent myocardial infarction. The pre-existing condition of T.L. could not be ignored but the initial traumatic event and the subsequent fractures played a further co-occurrent causal role. The initial trauma represented the first step of the phenomenological chain that led to a series of adverse cardiological events and to an irreversible asystole, so that the car driver should be partly considered accountable for the death of the woman.