Injuries caused by pellets, medical and medico-legal issues. A case presentation

T. Iov, D. B. Iliescu, A. Knieling, C. Furnica,

Abstract: Fire weapons cause various types of injuries, depending on their type and projectile. The observance of the methodological guidelines of medico-legal expertise, combined with investigation data, provides elements that may support accidental injury or not. This study presents a case that is problematic from a both surgical and medico-legal point of view. On a surgical level, difficulties were encountered in extracting the foreign body, while on a medico-legal level, issues referred to the accurate classification of the criminal act depending on the location and seriousness of the injury, the traumatic agent and the actual, immediate or late damage caused to the injured party. The complexity of the case reveals the drawbacks of the system for the assessment of injury gravity in medico-legal practice, as the indicative guidelines used in Romanian legal medicine for the award of medical care days is not enough to estimate the gravity of the injury caused to the victim, due to the particularities of the case. Corroborating medical data and medico-legal criteria, trauma-related expertise was drawn up so that the criminal act might be classified as accurately as possible.
Keywords: fire weapon, shooting, pellet, pellet migration, medico-legal issues.