Sequential Postmortem Histological Changes In Human Adrenal Gland Up To Thirteen Hour & Thirty Minutes Post Mortem Interval.

This study was performed in Department of Anatomy in close association with the Department of Forensic Medicine & Toxicology, Pt.J.N.M.Medical Collage and Dr. B.R.Ambedkar Memorial Hospital Raipur (C.G.).Present study was done on human cadavers. Material for the present study was adrenal gland, taken directly from the dead bodies during postmortem examination. Human adrenal gland was obtained from cadavers at the time of autopsy. It was removed from cadavers with a known time of death. Death had resulted from trauma. The stages for which it was available were temperature between12.2/28.5-30.5/39.90C,humidity between 17/53 to 76/92% and duration range was between 6hrs to 13hrs30 min.In the present study 11 cases were studied. In each case adrenal gland was studied histologically. The adrenal cortex and medulla were studied. In this study increase in the rate of postmortem histological changes were found to be increased with rise in the temperature and duration.In the present study earliest remarkable sequential postmortem histological changes were seen in adrenal medulla i,e.cellular outline was not clear in most of the places and most of the nuclei were completely hyperchromatic at 6hrs PMI (Temp 12.2/28.50C). Post-mortem histological changes are directly dependent not only on the length of post-mortem time but also to a bigger extent on the temperature of environment. The rate of autolysis varies with environmental temperature, body size, nutritional status, pelage. The changes were found to be irregular in some cases. In the present study it was observed that sequential postmortem histological changes were different in some cases of same duration. The main reason lies in the fact that there are an extreme number of factors, which influence the post-mortem degradation of tissue in each case.. The rate of cellular degradation is increased by large carcass size, excessive adipose tissue, thick fur or wool and antemortem hyperthermia caused by pyrexia violent exercise or heat exhaustion.