Greetings
Forensic medicine is a field of medicine that deals with the deceased. It may be a bit of an oddity in a medical school that aims to treat illnesses and injuries in living people. In the sense that it involves picking up each and every fact that happened in the past, it can be said to be a very backward-looking job.
However, after "life" comes "death," and we all live our lives experiencing the deaths of family and friends. Whether it's an accident or illness, the sudden loss of a loved one can leave a deep scar on the lives of those left behind. Not knowing what happened can lead to unnecessary doubts and regrets later on. In such cases, if we can find medical clues and clarify the circumstances of the death, we can find ways to prevent similar accidents or sudden deaths. Our goal is to connect each death to future lives.
Head of Department of Forensic Medicine Department
Yufu Kakimoto
Overview
Sudden death due to an unexpected circumstance, such as being involved in a crime or accident, or suffering from an unexpected illness, is called an "unnatural death." The job of forensic medicine is to medically clarify the circumstances under which such an unnatural death occurred.
Currently in Japan, one in eight deaths is treated by the police as an unnatural death, with the majority of these deaths occurring among elderly people due to illness. Unnatural deaths are not limited to elderly people living alone, but also include cases where the circumstances of death are unclear due to elderly care provided by other elderly people, and cases where the end-of-life care system at elderly care facilities is inadequate. Furthermore, while many sudden deaths among people in their prime working years are caused by lifestyle-related diseases, there are also cases where a determination is made that the death was caused by an industrial accident, including overwork. There are also many other situations in which medical examinations are required regarding death, such as the sudden death of an infant or the death of an unidentified person.
Tokai University's Department of Forensic Medicine performs approximately 200 autopsies and examinations per year, primarily in the western Kanagawa region, at the request of the Kanagawa Prefectural Police, Shizuoka Prefectural Police, and the Third Regional Coast Guard. To determine the cause of death, the circumstances of injuries, and identify unidentified individuals, we strive to improve the accuracy of postmortem diagnostic techniques through repeated examinations of postmortem CT scans, histopathological examinations, drug and toxicology analysis, DNA analysis, and more.