Autopsy... do they cut off heads in head trauma cases?

Question

Please help! Bit of a family debate happening, after watching an episode of CSI:Miami.

If it is a head trauma and murder... do they cut off the dead persons head off, and get the skull out to look at it closely?

In the epidsode of CSI:Miami (dont worry we dont believe this programme on everything we are just intrigued whether this part of the programme is true!!) they removed the head of a man that had been hit in the head, boiled the skin off the skull, and used the skull to determine what had happened to him.

My question is... do they really do this in autopsys?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Not generally...the medical examiners will usually remove the skin from the head to check out the skull. But this is only if they have found the person before decomposition. Often, if it's a murder, the murderer will hide the body and later just the remains will be found, so the skull won't even be attached to the body.

But I would say that in most cases, they do not cut the head off.

Answer 2

No, they do not remove the head. If they need to check the skull, they just peel the skin off.

Answer 3

I had an autopsy class last year as a subject. The case that we saw was a gang overlord who died due to overdosing himself with drugs. During an autopsy, the person who is examining the dead corpse has to do a full body autopsy to determine the cause of death and if any other little minor details that might change the preliminary cause of death.

The examiner first incised the top of the head horizontally (left to right). then he saws off the top cap of the skull to reveal the brain. Then once the skull cap is off, he would then take the brain out and examine the skull if there was any signs of head trauma. the whole skull would be throughly examined with his head intact to the body, just that the skull is opened and the brain is taken out. In this case, we saw that the cadaver had a past injury to his skull. So this excludes him from being dead due to a head injury. Then the examiner takes the brain and slices it up into thin 3 mm slices to examine if there was any defects in the brain. Mainly if there was brain hemorrhage or a clot in the brain. The examiner would then take a piece of the sliced brain for biopsy.

Once the brain and skull is examined, the examiner would then make incisions to open up the abdomen. Once the abdomen is opened up, the examiner would take out the whole gastrointestinal tract from the body which is from the tongue all the way until the r****m. Each single organ is examined carefully to make sure that nothing is missed. Biopsies are taken from internal organs like the liver, the intestines and the lungs.

Apart from all the internal organs, the whole body surface is examined throughly which is the skin for any injection marks or cuts. At the end, the examiner would then make his conclusion. I hope this insight would help you answer your question.