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The Incised Wound

  • Chapter
Essentials of Autopsy Practice

Abstract

A wound is defined as an injury to the surface of the body, “caused by a cut, blow, hard or sharp impact etc., especially one in which the skin is cut or broken; an external injury.”1. In practice, to the medical practitioner, the terms wound and injury are synonymous but strictly the legal definition of a wound involves breaking of the full thickness of the skin. An incision is a division made by cutting and a cut is defined as a long, narrow opening in a surface, especially the skin, made by something sharp; an incision, a gash. The verb to cut means to penetrate or wound with a sharp-edged implement1 and therefore cuts/incisions are sharp force injuries. To stab is to wound or kill a person by a thrust with the point of a knife (or other weapon)1 and although it is accepted that fatal stabbing can result from penetration of the body by a blunt weapon, the majority of such cases, certainly in the UK, are caused by sharp-edged weapons, principally knives. Therefore, most (but not all) stab wounds are a form of incised wound.

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  1. A. M. Davison
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  1. Division of Forensic Pathology, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

    Guy Nathan Rutty MD, MB, BS, FRCPath, DipRCPath(Forensic) (Professor of Forensic Pathology and Head of Division, Consultant Home Office Pathologist) (Professor of Forensic Pathology and Head of Division, Consultant Home Office Pathologist)

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Davison, A.M. (2004). The Incised Wound. In: Rutty, G.N. (eds) Essentials of Autopsy Practice. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-0637-1_8

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