ABSTRACT
Injury assessment, documentation and interpretation is one of the primary functions of practitioners working in forensic pathology and clinical forensic medicine. Forensic practitioners should be able to assess, document and interpret visible injuries, wounds, cutaneous marks or scars which have been sustained as a result of trauma or violence. This should be documented injury in written, diagrammatic and imaging forms to enable evidence to be reviewed and understood by other forensic practitioners and non-healthcare professionals such as judges, juries, law-enforcement professionals and lawyers. Classification of injury should be simple, reproducible and unambiguous and, wherever possible, standardized reporting should be undertaken. Injury classification and documentation systems have been used in many settings and some of these could be adapted to a standardized, international, forensic reporting format.
