Significant postmortem diffusion of ethanol: A case report

In the realm of forensic pathology, ethanol is one of the most frequently encountered xenobiotics. The determination of ethanol concentration in blood after death is of great interest in forensic settings. It is important to be able to determine the level of intoxication of the deceased at the time of death, which is directly correlated to the ability to act prior to death, especially when a suicide is suspected. This estimation is not always easy to establish owing to various artifacts that are important to know for a proper ethanol blood level interpretation, among them postmortem (PM) diffusion. We describe here a case of unusual ethanol distribution in body compartments and discuss the importance of PM diffusion and redistribution while performing complementary toxicological analysis, especially when the blood and urine samples seemed to be inconsistent after the first results.