CHENNAI: The holes seen on former chief minister J Jayalalithaa's cheek when the body was kept on display for public homage at the Rajaji Hall had triggered widespread speculation.
Doctors, led by London-based critical care expert Dr Richard Beale, said Jayalalithaa, who was admitted to Apollo Hospitals on September 22, 2016, with breathlessness triggered by an infection, died of cardiac arrest on December 5. Minutes after her death, Dr Sudha Seshayyan, director of anatomy, Madras Medical College, was called in to do the embalming procedure.
"Embalming was done to prevent the body from decomposing when it was placed for public homage. It's a procedure where we inject a mixture of chemicals to preserve the body," she said.
While doing the 15-minute procedure, she noticed three dots on Jayalalithaa's cheek. "These were just ecchymoti(subcutaneous) dots. These could be the result of anchoring the tracheostomy tubes. Her lips too were swollen, probably because of the ventilator clamp. When we injected about 5.5 litres of fluid through her right femoral artery (blood vessel in the leg), there was no leak, barring mucus discharge from the nose. I don't know how or why the holes on her cheeks looked big in the pictures on social media," she said.
