Clinical Case Reports for the Evidence-Based Era

Investigation of disputed paternity using molecular techniques is now increasingly used by the justice system. Unfortunately, it is common to find that some laboratories use poor practices - the most common being the omission of testing the mother's genetic profile.

We present the case of a 32-year-old female patient admitted to the Third Department of General Surgery in Krakow for thyroidectomy due to papillary thyroid carcinoma. The patient underwent a total thyroidectomy with removal of the lymph nodes of the central compartment of the neck without any intraoperative complications. On the first day after surgery, 300 ml of milky fluid was observed in the right drain. Due to persistent lymphadenopathy, oral feeding was stopped and total parenteral nutrition was started. Drainage volumes observed on subsequent days varied between 580 and 50 ml with a decreasing trend. The drains were removed on the 13th postoperative day with no sign of lymphothorax.

Development and progress are associated with hard, usually teamwork. They rarely occur as a result of individual efforts of the mind, and even more rarely as a result of chance. Since the dawn of human history, there have been events that could not be explained at the time. We cannot explain them today either. They concerned phenomena in nature. Most often, however, inexplicable events occur in people's lives.

The paper discusses the legal, medical, organizational and social issues related to the establishment of disputed paternity. It also discusses the history and outlines the future development of this application of genetic. Special emphasis was placed on ethical issues.