Postmortem radiological investigation of bridging vein ruptures

In the usual method of brain removal in forensic autopsies, the upper bridging veins were invariably torn. There are several types of head injuries, in which ruptures of these vessels are the predominant intracranial injury. For the past 5 years we have investigated nearly all cases of lethal head injuries by a simple X-ray method (axial X-ray after instillation of contrast material into the superior sagittal sinus). The evaluation of the 350 X-rays which were available until today can be summarized by the following statements. (a) Anatomy of the parasagittal bridging veins: regarding the numbers and diameters of the veins, we can separate cases with many bridging veins of small diameter from a group with few veins of a large diameter. (b) Causes of injury and direction of impact: bridging vein ruptures resulted more often from frontal than from occipital, parietal and lateral impacts and occurred in traffic accidents in the majority of our cases.