Three year review of medico-legal fatalities in Lamphun Hospital

Abstract

           Aims of this descriptive research are to study the general characteristics and medico-legal problems, which occurred during postmortem inquest or postmortem examination, of medico-legal fatalities, and the completeness of postmortem records for development of forensic practice in Lamphun Hospital. The author retrospectively reviewed the data of all dead bodies in a 32-month period, between January 1, 2004 and August 31, 2006, from medical records and official postmortem examination reports from both police and doctors. All data were analyzed and presented in frequency or percentage. Results revealed that 462 bodies had been examined by doctors in Lamphun Hospital; Male = 396 cases, female = 66 cases. The postmortem inquest was performed in only 16.2% of case. The most frequent cause of death was injury-related death (38.5%), mainly traffic injuries and more than half died at the scene. The second and third most frequent causes of death were presumed hanging and drowning, respectively. The mode of death was concluded as the cause of death in 23%. The most common mode of death was cardiac arrest. The time of death was recorded in only 11.5%. In conclusion, general data show that death at the scene of traffic injury-related deaths are an important public health problem in urban area of Lamphun province. There are some problems in dealing with medico-legal fatalities, so doctors should conclude the cause of death based on scene investigation, external examination, internal examination, and toxicological analysis in initially presumed hanging cases and immersion cases. The doctor should record the time of death and certify the cause of death in a standard death certification.