Deaths from extremes of temperature

Abstract

Deaths associated with exposure to high and low environmental temperatures are common, but can present problems to the pathologist because of the relative lack of diagnostic findings at autopsy. Where a clinical recording of temperature has been made, then the diagnosis will often be self-evident. In other cases, the suspicion of a death from extremes of temperature will be raised by the circumstances of the death and knowledge of the environmental temperature. As well as the effects of the environmental temperature, hypothermia and hyperthermia may be the result of natural disease and use of certain drugs.