Gambaran Makroskopik Dan Mikroskopik Otot Skelet Pada Hewan Coba Postmortem

: To make pathologists and law personnel aware of the importance of postmortem interval, published studies have reported a lot of methods for estimation of postmortem interval estimation of the remains. This study was aimed to obtain macroscopic and microscopic postmortem changes of skeletal muscle of two domestic pigs weighed 20 kg. This was a descriptive observational study. After the pigs were killed, death time, ambient temperature and humadity were noted. Postmortem evaluation were done at several time intervals, as follows: 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours, 5 hours, 6 hours, 9 hours, 12 hours, 15 hours, 18 hours, 21 hours, 24 hours, 30 hours, 36 hours, 42 hours, and 48 hours. The results showed that at 2 hours after death, the skeletal muscle became pale and soft progressively. The earliest microscopic change was identified at 30 minutes postmortem as pyknotic nuclei of skeletal muscles followed by hydrophic degeneration of muscle fibers and congestion of muscle tisue. At 12 hours until 48 hours postmortem, all microscopic changes became more distinct and widely distributed in nearly all muscle fibres. Albeit, the striated pattern and some normal muscle fibres could still be identified until 48 hours postmortem.Conclusion: Macroscopic changes could be identified the earliest at 2 hours postmortem and microscopic changes could be identified at 30 minutes postmortem