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Int J Legal Med (2013) 127:447451 DOI 10.1007/s00414-012-0727-1
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Is the lung floating test a valuable tool or obsolete? A prospective autopsy study
Anna-Lena Groe Ostendorf & Markus A. Rothschild &
Annette M. Mller & Sibylle Banaschak
Received: 25 February 2012 /Accepted: 12 June 2012 /Published online: 26 June 2012 # Springer-Verlag 2012
Abstract The lung floating test is still an obligatory measure to distinguish whether a newborn was born dead or alive. In order to verify the reliability of the floating test, a new clinical trial should examine the results of current cases and thus expose, if the test is still contemporary. Following the question, if the test is appropriate for the nowadays birth collective, 208 lungs of newborns were tested with the floating test. The test showed the expected correct result in 204 cases. However, it indicated a false negative result in four cases, in which the lungs sank, although prior life had been reported by medical staff. Overall, the study was able to prove that the results of the floating test are reliable in 98 %. Further, there was not a single false-positive result (lungs of a stillborn swim). Nevertheless, the test demonstrates that a negative test result cannot be taken as proof for a newborn never to have breathed at all.
Keywords Lung floating test . Neonates . Stillborn .
Newborn
Introduction
The lung floating test (also known as hydrostatic test, floatation test, lung test, or docimasia), normally undertaken during the medicolegal autopsy of newborns and possibly
stillborn children, is considered as obligatory during a forensic autopsy in Germany. In Anglo-Saxon countries, however, it is not deemed necessary. The question whether a newborn breathed before it died or not has probably provoked more discussion, printed words, and controversy than any other topic in forensic medicine [1]. In English literature, the test is judged critically [18], with one author even suggesting that the test was suspect even in 1900 and requires no detailed discussion, because it is now known to have no value.it is, therefore, pointless to apply the hydrostatic test which, moreover, will impair the material for other and more important investigations [4].
It is about time to find out if the lung floating test is indeed obsolete or...