This is pretty common when a medical examiner is making a determination on the manner of death. The main question is if the person returned to the same quality of life afterwards or if the incident caused lifelong effects.
Most commonly if a person is severely injured in a car accident and has lingering complications. They may die 20 years later naturally in their sleep but it could be ruled "accidental" rather than "natural" and a line on cause may include "complications due to motor vehicle accident".
I had one where a guy was shot in the head in the 90s and lived with lingering headaches. That was enough that it required an autopsy to determine if it was the bullet still in his head that contributed to his death.
OmegaZodiac t1_je9ok2z wrote
Reply to TIL that when former White House press secretary James Brady died in 2014, his death was ruled a homicide because it was ultimately caused by a gunshot wound he sustained in 1981, during the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan by IAmTiborius
This is pretty common when a medical examiner is making a determination on the manner of death. The main question is if the person returned to the same quality of life afterwards or if the incident caused lifelong effects.
Most commonly if a person is severely injured in a car accident and has lingering complications. They may die 20 years later naturally in their sleep but it could be ruled "accidental" rather than "natural" and a line on cause may include "complications due to motor vehicle accident".
I had one where a guy was shot in the head in the 90s and lived with lingering headaches. That was enough that it required an autopsy to determine if it was the bullet still in his head that contributed to his death.