Hyoid Bone Fractures in Homicide and Suicide: A Comparative Study - Thesis Example

Results: Hyoid Bone Fractures in Homicide and Suicide: A Comparative Study 9th October Results Introduction: The U-shaped bone called the hyoidis present in the ventral aspect of the neck at the fourth cervical vertebra. The bone is small and is placed between the root of tongue and the thyroid tongue. During autopsy of hanging, ligature strangulation and throttling incidents, hyoid bone fracture investigation is an integral part of internal examination of such victims (Naik and Patil, 2005). Fractures of this bone have been documented as recognizable evidence and indicators of strangulation including manual, throttling and even in cases of suicidal hanging (Mukhopadhyay, 2010). This has become necessary as in cases of victims’ where body is undergoing decomposition; observation of internal structures of the neck such as the hyoid bone for presence of fracture therefore becomes relevant. Most of the study we analysed in this study grouped other neck structure injuries such as thyroid cartilage fracture and carotid as neck injuries. However as demonstrated in this study, hyoid bone fracture comes prominently as the common neck structure injury in most cases of homicide and suicide. However, various studies have reported differently on the presence or absence of hyoid bone fracture and furthermore the extent of these fractures. In this study data was collated and analysed from twenty [20] selected primary observational studies investigating the association of hyoid bone fracture with strangulation (throttling and garroting), suicidal hanging and age of the victim. Studies were obtained from database searches of PubMed and further cross checking of the reference lists. Sex was not included in the analyses with the results being pooled into two mutually exclusive groups’ i.e. hyoid bone fracture and hyoid bone without fracture. In supporting the four hypothesis stated below, statistical analysis were done in the SPSS statistical software to test any significance difference between results pooled from different literature for presence and absence of hyoid bone fracture following manual strangulation, suicidal hanging and relationship between the ages of victims and presence of the hyoid bone fractures. Research Hypothesis 1. It will be found that in throttling and hanging cases there are differences in the incidence of hyoid bone fracture. In this study, we embarked to investigate cases of hyoid bone fracture in throttling and hanging cases. This was to verify the hypothesis whether hyoid bone fracture is randomly associated with either cases. Table 1: Comparison of cases of hyoid bone facture hanging and throttling cases Mean Standard deviation Hanging 11.50 2.121 Throttling 16.50 3.536 Hyoid bone fracture was observed to be random in hanging and throttling cases as there was no significance difference (P>0.05) hyoid bone fracture. 2. It will be found that hyoid bone fractures occur in a random fashion in suicidal hanging deaths. Suicidal hanging is a form of ligature strangulation where the force applied to the neck is derived from the gravitational drag of the, weight of the body (Slobodan et al., 2003). Common types of hanging are suicidal as opposed to accidental. Hyoid bone fracture has been reported by different studies in this area. This study collected data from primary sources involving seven studies that investigated the cases of hyoid bone fracture in accidental and suicidal hanging. Some studies we investigated here grouped hyoid bone fractures together with other type of neck fractures/injuries and in such cases only hyoid bone fractures were selected. Data was summarized as mean, standard deviation and a 95% confidence interval. A two-tailed P-value of less than 0.05 was considered significant. SPSS® software for windows version 17.0 was used for the statistical analyses. Table 2: Table indicating the means and standard deviation of hanging cases from seven studies investigated. Hanging cases Mean Standard deviation with hyoid fracture 28.14 29.504 without fracture 105.29 90.273 *N= 7 *number of studies In the study it above cases we carried a paired t-test using the SPSS statistical software to compare the means between the presence and absence of hyoid bone fracture. A confidence level of 0.95 was selected in this study (N=7), with a 6 degree of freedom. The null hypothesis stating that hyoid bone fracture was random in suicidal hanging was accepted as there was no significance difference (P> 0.05) between the number of cases with fractures of the hyoid bone and those that showed no hyoid bone fracture at all. Therefore, the study concludes that the presence or absence of hyoid bone fracture can not be reliable in establishing evidence of a hanging case in a forensic investigation since their occurrence is random as observed in this study. It should be noted that several literatures have indicated the rising of hyoid bone fracture with progress in age in suicidal hanging (Clement et al., 2011). However in suicidal hanging the type of suspension, whether complete or incomplete also influences the extent of these fractures as observed by Clement et al., (2011) study. Other factors that may attribute the extent of hyoid bone fractures in cases of suicidal hanging include the type of ligature, weight and height of the victim and gender. 3. It will be found that hyoid bone fractures are present in a majority of strangulation cases including throttling and garroting. Studies of have shown that the type of ligature influences hyoid bone fracture which depends on; level of constriction, force of constriction, age and sex of the victim. In our analyses, the sex of the victim may influence the extent of hyoid bone fracture since as corroborated by some studies male victims may resist strangulation, thereby increasing the force of strangulation as compared to female victims. Table 3: Relationship of Hyoid bone fracture and strangulation Hyoid fracture Mean Standard deviation Present 15.50 17.678 Absent 8.50 6.364 There was no significant difference observed (p > 0.05) between cases with hyoid bone fracture and those without where manual strangulation was the cause of death in the study we surveyed. 4. It will be found that the incidence of hyoid bone fractures increases with age in hanging deaths. Age has been observed to be one of the factors which affect the probability of hyoid bone fracture in cases of hanging, manual strangulation and ligature strangulation. Therefore it becomes necessary to ascertain any differences between age groups. In this data sourced from literature sources was grouped into two categories and using the Person chi-square test, any significance difference was observed between two age groups, those older than 40 years and younger than 40 years with relation to rate of hyoid bone fractures in these incidences. Table 4: Relationship of age and hyoid bone fracture Age Absence of fracture Presence of fracture n % n % < 40 114 82 25 18 >40 34 51 33 49 Person Chi-square = 21.851; p =0.000 The results obtained showed there was significant difference (P Read More