How can we know whether a body found in the water really drowned?

Though it may seem a truism, the fact of a corpse found in the water need not necessarily mean you are dead drowned. This is very obvious when you find the corpse with a wound from a firearm, knife or any other injury "blunt" and that tells you to shout that the cause of death is by trauma and the role of water may be from purely "environmental" (the person was accidentally struck and then fell to the water) or as a way to hide the body because it was a murder. But if the cause of death is not as obvious as a trauma, how can we know if water was involved or not?

First we must differentiate between wet and drowning dry drowning. Wet drowning is one that we all know, a person begins to swallow water and enters the respiratory system, causing suffocation. Dry drowning is more rare (in between 10-20% of drowning) and the cause of asphyxia is not the water, but a spasm of the laryngeal glottis closure, which appears as a mechanism of drowning struggle, that avoids the passage of water but also the lungs of air. Which leads to a final death by suffocation. Not that it's a very effective mechanism for survival, But those who are without water, the lungs respond to a much better recovery time than those that have water and have spent the same amount of time without oxygen.

Diagnosing a wet drowning is relatively easy to diagnose a dry drowning can be quite difficult and it may be necessary to reach it by a process of discarding. If the larynx and glottis remain contracted (by a process of cadaveric spasm) when the autopsy is easy to think that was a dry drowning, but if this does not occur and the channels are normal, the coroner gets a long day ahead out other causes of death, even though you know not to be treated in a wet drowning for the reasons explained later.

There are a number of steps to see if it is a drowning. I've ordered from the most obvious / easy to verify to a greater degree of difficulty, either because it is necessary forensic expertise and / or performing an autopsy:

1 - Foam at the mouth

During a wet drowning, the water passes through the airways with inspired air and mixes with the mucous secretions characteristic of these routes. As for drowning breathing efforts are often important, the movement of air and water secretion causes the production of a foam of fine bubbles. This foam can be found in the airways, but it will also be visible around the mouth. When you see a corpse with foam around the mouth and have almost secured the diagnosis of death by drowning. But this is not 100% sure. There are poisons, drugs, heart failure and a long list that may cause the person to have foam around the mouth. To ensure that the foam is the result of drowning, we must make sure this is fine and that, if removed from the mouth, and pushed on his chest, the foam will reappear, as it is for almost all the respiratory .

2 - Diatoms in Organs

The diatoms are microscopic algae that can be found in any aquatic environment. When someone is drowning, water also draws on inspiration these small algae. However, these algae are not there due to breathing efforts occur tears of pulmonary capillaries that allow its passage through the blood. And from there, will be sent to different regions of the human body (liver, kidney, etc.).. In a cadaver that had been thrown into the water after they died, it could diatoms in the lungs, the water travels passively to them. But they do not become blood because no harm would have occurred in the pulmonary capillaries.

The search for diatoms is very useful when several days have passed since the death of the person and the foam in the airways is gone. And also to put the initial location of drowning, as the currents can change the location of the corpse. With the analysis of the type of diatoms containing the body can be compared with those who are in the initial place and see if they match.

3 - Signs on the specific cardiac Lung

In fact, when doing an autopsy is complete. But here I refer only to the lung because it is the body that provides more data on a possible death by drowning.In addition to the capillary ruptures mentioned earlier respiratory efforts, we also find the breakdown of walls between the alveoli and bloodshed in the thickness of the lung.The lungs often contain more blood in their vessels which are normally (hyperemia) and there is accumulation of fluid in the lung (edema) and destruction of air spaces, such as the alveoli and bronchioles terminales.

With all that already have the Basic Pack Morbid-CSI to drown. Of course, those involved in professional forensic science students many more factors besides these three. But I have mentioned are a summary of the most indicative signs and the sign of the foam is one that anyone can check (another thing is you have to do the cold-blooded, of course).