Published in:
01-03-2015 | Letter to the Editor
Protrusion of the tongue in burned bodies as a vital sign? Letter to the editor concerning the paper “Tongue protrusion as an indicator of vital burning” by Bernitz et al.
Authors:
Burkhard Madea, Elke Doberentz
Published in:
International Journal of Legal Medicine
|
Issue 2/2015
Login to get access
Excerpt
Bernitz et al. published a paper on protrusion of the tongue in burned bodies [
2]. The authors were of the opinion, protrusion of the tongue is an indicator of vital burning. The conclusion of the authors was already questioned by Bohnert [
6] who focussed on the one hand on the weakness of the statistical comparison between two groups of different samples sizes and a missing pathophysiological explanation on which basis a vital protrusion of the tongue in burned bodies occurs. The authors replied [
3], and Hejna and Janik [
13] contributed further cases of tongue protrusion in vital burning. …