AURICULAR CARTILAGE AS A TOOL FOR POSTMORTEM INTERVAL ESTIMATION IN HUMAN

Background: Accurate estimation of the postmortem (PM) interval, despite being a routine daily forensic expert work, is still a challenging practice. Science continues to grow in this topic. Cartilage is a specific avascular, non-lymphatic, and non-nervous specific connective tissue. Objectives: This work aimed to assess the use of auricular elastic cartilage as a tool for estimation of late PM interval in human. Methods: Biopsies were taken from ear cartilages of 43 victims how died from suspicious criminal causes. Routine haematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining was performed. The following histopathological parameters were examined, perichondrium, the number of lacunae with chondrocytes, nuclear material, and extracellular matrix. A scoring system was used for each parameter in different postmortem (PM) intervals. Results: Cases were classified into 3 groups (1-7, 8-14-, and 15-21-days PM). The examined histological parameters give statistically significant changes across the tested PM intervals. The correlation coefficient between the tested parameters and PM intervals gives significant results. The r-value was highest with the percentage of lacunae without chondrocytes and lowest with perichondrium loss (r = 0.62 and 0.35 respectively). Conclusion: Auricular cartilage showed remarkable changes that are correlated with PM interval in human. In the future, a large sample should be investigated with studying the impaction of environmental factors on these changes.