Biochemical markers and microbiology in post-mortem diagnosis of sepsis: A systematic review

In many circumstances the forensic pathologist can question whether the dead person experienced sepsis, which caused or contributed to death. The autopsy of a death related to sepsis is a difficult task for the forensic pathologist due to the lack of typical pathological factors as well as clinical and circumstantial information about death. Several authors underlined how forensic biochemistry and microbiology could help in diagnosing a death related to sepsis. The research we carried out analyses the main scientific studies in literature, primarily tracing biochemical markers evaluated to help diagnosing a death related to sepsis. This review analyses the main problems linked to forensic microbiology investigations, whose results are burdened by heavy issues concerning their interpretation, above all when clinical and circumstantial data are lacking.