Author(s)

Enrico De Dominicis^1*, Giuseppe Santeusanio², Filippo Milano¹, Luigi Tonino Marsella¹

¹Department of Biomedicine and Prevention, Medical Faculty of Tor Vergata University, Rome, Italy.
²Department of Experimental Medicine and Surgery, Medical Faculty of Tor Vergata University, Rome, Italy.

Drowning still remains one of the most difficult diagnoses in forensic pathology because macroscopic and microscopic autopsy findings are unspecific. An ideal diagnostic marker for drowning still needs to be developed, but some authors have recently studied SP-A as a marker of asphyxiation and drowning. The aim of this study is to compare the histopathological features and the SP-A immunohistochemical expression in lung tissue in the case of drowning with those determined by other causes to discriminate between cadaver submersion and drowning.

Drowning, Autopsy, Immunohistochemistry, Surfactant Protein A, Pathology

Dominicis, E. , Santeusanio, G. , Milano, F. and Marsella, L. (2016) Pulmonary Immunohistochemical Detection of Surfactant Protein A (SP-A) in Fatal Drowning. Forensic Medicine and Anatomy Research, 4, 33-36. doi: 10.4236/fmar.2016.43006.