From the archive of a court expert in Medicine in the fields of Occupational Diseases and Work Accidents, Internal Medicine

Overview

Buchancová J.: From the archive of a court expert in Medicine in the fields of Occupational Diseases and Work Accidents, Internal Medicine

The author presents selected cases from 168 expert opinions prepared during 20 years of forensic expert practice between 1985 and 2005 in the field of “medicine”, specifically in the branches of occupational diseases and occupational injuries, as well as internal medicine. She briefly introduces the criteria of expertise, years of professional practice, and the necessity of fulfilling additional conditions required for carrying out expert activities. In the field of occupational medicine, in the second half of the 20th century in the Slovak Republic, the most frequent expert opinions concerned the causes of death in miners. Gradually, a significant change occurred regarding the broad spectrum of diseases, whose causes can, to varying degrees, be linked to the work environment and working conditions. From the more remarkable expert opinions, 7 case reports were selected. They concerned the following cases: multiorgan failure after severe inhalation and aspiration trauma caused by biogas and wastewater in a young man; a sudden cerebrovascular accident following excessive forced psychological and physical stress at work; myocardial infarction that developed in an untrained worker during an inappropriate physical fitness test; unexpected death at home occurring at a longer time interval after a femoral fracture caused by a bull attack; an occupational injury in a temporary worker who, while loading straw bales weighing 30–40 kg onto a tractor trailer with a pitchfork, suffered a whiplash injury of the cervical spine due to sudden hyperextension of the head, followed by unconsciousness and subsequent permanent manifestations of cerebral ischemia and disability at the age of 34; a 65-year-old female physician who had worked for 21 years in an inpatient tuberculosis ward, who, after retiring, had been unsuccessfully treated by an orthopaedist for knee pain for 3 years, and was eventually diagnosed with a late articular form of tuberculosis –⁠ the difficulties subsided only after causal anti-tuberculosis treatment; and a mentally retarded man who, after losing his job and experiencing life tragedies, became addicted to alcohol, drank excessively, and renewed a life insurance policy. He died at the age of 48.

Keywords:

occupational disease – thromboembolic disease – occupational injuries – sudden vascular events – poisoning by biogas and wastewater – whiplash injury – join form of TB