Gunshot wounds to the skull: comparison of entries and exits

Specific features usually allow recognition of entrance and exit wounds in bones. Exits are often more irregular, and usually larger than entrances. The aim of this paper is to compare the size of 17 entrance and exit gunshot wounds from a series of 13 forensic cases. The results of this work confirm the usually accepted fact that exit wounds in bones tend to be larger than the entrances resulting from the same shot. In all but one case the exits were larger than the entrances in this study. Though the bullet loses velocity after penetrating, the ballistic behavior (deformation and instability of the projectile) explains this tendency.