[Determination of ethanol concentrations from bile and its importance in forensic medicine]

Determination of post-mortem ethanol concentration is a very important analytical examination in forensic toxicological daily routine. But in many cases, blood and urine are not available in appropriate quality and quantity for the analysis. In these cases, other biological matrices such as liquor vitreous humor, saliva, bile, etc. can be used for ethanol concentration determination. In toxicological laboratories, these kinds of examinations have been done for decades. In our institute, we compared the ethanol concentrations of blood, urine and bile samples collected from 115 autopsies. Determination of ethanol levels was carried out by using headspace GC according to international practice. The average of ethanol concentration ratios ([blood]/[bile]) was 1,220. Furthermore, we examined the pH of bile samples, but we did not find any relationships between ethanol levels and pH values. In 90 percent of results, positive correlation can be shown between bile and blood ethanol levels. In remaining cases, we tried to account for the reasons of differences by looking into autopsy reports.