Pericardial fluid as an alternative specimen to blood for postmortem toxicological analyses

In actual forensic cases, we occasionally encounter victims with their blood being completely lost. In this study, pericardial fluid has been proposed as a specimen for toxicological analysis, and its utility has been evaluated. Fifteen autopsy cases with little putrefaction were selected. Fairly good correlations were observed between blood and pericardial fluid for all drugs, neutral and basic drugs and acidic drugs with regression equations of y=1.09x - 0.086 (r=0.989, n=21), y=0.969x - 0.072 (r=0.993, n=16) and y=1.01x + 0.355 (r=0.970, n=5), respectively. The correlations of drug concentrations between blood and cerebrospinal fluid/femoral muscle were not as good as those between blood and pericardial fluid. No correlations were observed between blood and urine/bile. The ratios of pesticide concentrations in each specimen to those in blood showed a large variation. Although our study was limited to a small number of cases, we have concluded that pericardial fluid is a good sample for quantitative confirmation of analyses performed on blood samples or a quantitative alternative to blood in exsanguinated victims. Cerebrospinal fluid, urine, bile and the skeletal muscle were found to be suitable only for qualitative analyses.