Detection of Alcohol in Different Post-Mortem Samples

Alcohol detection in post-mortem cases becomes more important at the present time due to the increase in the number of alcohol related fatalities in the world. Toxicological analysis can give a good idea about the presence and levels of alcohol in different post-mortem samples. Drug and blood chemical level data for more than 200 drugs including alcohol is published [1]. This data is used to differentiate between the therapeutic, toxic and lethal drug concentrations mainly in the blood. However, the results are difficult to interpret when compared with this data because the latter does not mention the site of the post-mortem collection of the blood sample. In general, the preferable sample for alcohol detection in forensic cases is the femoral blood but this sample may be difficult to obtain in many situations (e.g. stabbing, sever haemorrhage and trauma). Interpretation of alcohol results in blood samples obtained from body sites other than the femoral vein represents a practical problem. In this study, about 66 post-mortem fluid samples representing femoral blood, cardiac blood, urine, vitreous humour, bile and stomach contents were analysed and findings were compared. Correlation between alcohol concentrations in the femoral blood and other samples was made by regression study. It was found that values of the minimum and maximum concentrations were respectively: 4mg/dl, 365 mg/dl for the femoral blood (FB), 16mg/dl and 323mg/dl for the cardiac blood (CB), 4mg/dl and 346 mg/dl for the vitreous humour (VH), 77mg/dl and 920 mg/dl for the urine (U), 65 mg/dl and 241 mg/dl for the bile and 40mg/dl and 2 490mg/dl for the stomach contents. There were significant correlations between C