Ultrastructural changes during in situ early postmortem autolysis in kidney, pancreas, liver, heart and skeletal muscle of rats

Y Tomita, M Nihira, Y Ohno, S Sato - Legal medicine, 2004 - Elsevier
Many morphological studies of the postmortem interval were carried out under conditions in
which the tissue was incubated in vitro after extirpation. However, the extirpation affects cell
viability. We examined the ultrastructural changes in the kidney, pancreas, liver, heart and
skeletal muscle of male Wistar rats occurring postmortem in situ. In each organ, cell edema
(cell swelling), appearance of amorphous dense deposits in the mitochondria, loss of
glycogen granules, dilation of the endoplasmic reticulum, clumping and margination of …