Introduction: Summative assessments play a major role in shaping the student’s learning. There is little literature available on validity of summative assessment question papers Forensic Medicine & Toxicology. This study analyses 30 from 6 reputed universities for content validity. Methods: A retrospective cross-sectional record-based observational was conducted where university Toxicology ...

This study concerns thanatochemistry, an important sub-branch of forensic toxicology dealing with uncontrolled biochemical post-mortem processes resulting in autosynthesis of endogenous chemical compounds. Knowledge of chemical structure of endogenous products formed in the course of autolysis and putrefaction is of paramount importance for diagnosis and indispensable for interpretation of typi...

Gas chromatography (GC) and immunoassay techniques applied to blood and urine specimens were compared for the screening of benzodiazepines in postmortem forensic toxicology. Five hundred and six such successive postmortem cases in which both urine and peripheral blood was sent for toxicological analysis by the medical examiners were selected. The urine specimens were tested by the Emit((R)) d.a...

No computation is performed more frequently by forensic toxicologists than that involving Widmark's equation. The equation is employed to estimate either the number of drinks consumed or the corresponding blood or breath alcohol concentration. Despite the wide use of Widmark's equation, rarely is an uncertainty estimate also provided. Estimates from Widmark's equation involve at least seven unc...

Determination of cocaine and its metabolites in biological specimens is of great importance, not only in clinical and forensic toxicology, but also in workplace drug testing. These compounds are normally screened for using sensitive immunological methods. However, screening methods are unspecific and, therefore, the posterior confirmation of presumably positive samples by a specific technique i...

The questions of whether the dose of drug that is consumed corresponds to drug concentration levels in hair and how results of hair analyses can be interpreted are still debated. The aim of this study was to investigate (1) whether there is a correlation between doses of Methamphetamine (MA) use and MA concentration levels in hair and (2) whether results of hair analyses can be used to estimate...