title: A preliminary study of changes in scalp impedance during the early post-mortem period in rats.
abstract: An accurate and reproducible technique was used for estimation of scalp impedance (1 kHz) in each of eight rat cadavers, maintained at 9.0 +/- 0.7 degrees C, during the 1 to 144 hour post-mortem period. Scalp impedance increased non-linearly, and in a bimodal manner, between 24 and 144 hours post-mortem. The relationship between scalp impedance and post-mortem interval, and the degree of individual variation in the time course of impedance change, were such that scalp impedance is unlikely to be a suitable tool for estimation of time since death.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology, University of Cape Town Medical School, Observatory, South Africa.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Querido
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D017097:Electric Impedance; D008297:Male; D011180:Postmortem Changes; D051381:Rats; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012535:Scalp / Q000502:physiology*