Autopsy findings in death due to Eisenmenger syndrome: A medico-legal case of road traffic accident

Abstract

Fatal road traffic accident cases constitute a major portion of the medicolegal post-mortem workload at most of the institutes and autopsy in these cases sometime reveals important underlying cardiac or brain pathology which represents the actual cause of death. In such cases, history of the road traffic accident may merely be the confounding factor to complicate the pre-existing organ pathology. In this particular case, the vicitm was riding his motorbike and suddenly lost control of it, falling in the path of autorickshaw and sustaining fracture of left tibia and fibula. However, past history, clinical findings and investigations during treatment revealed that the patient was suffering from undiagnosed ventricular septal defect(VSD).Later on, the patient died due to cerebral and pulmonary edema associated with congestive cardiac failure as a complication of the VSD along with features of Eisenmenger syndrome(ES).This rare case depicts gross findings in ES due to VSD in the backdrop of external injuries sustained due to road traffic accident as a potential aggravating factor to the natural disease process leading to death.

Keywords

• Road traffic accidents
• Ventricular septal defect
• Right ventricular hypertrophy
• Eisenmenger syndrome