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Patterns and Determinants of Medicolegal Cases in Tertiary Care Hospital

. Dr Dileep Kumar, Dr Khalida Naz Memon, Dr. Muhammad Najeeb, Dr. Rehmatullah Kundhro4, Fiaque Ali Kalhoro, Muhammad Zakarya, Dr Rajni Vikram Kumar and Dr. Muhammad Adil


Abstract

Globally medicolegal injuries contribute towards huge burden of diseases .The mortality arising from trauma due to road traffic accidents, poisoning etc are expected to be doubled in near future. There is dearth of assessment of this public health issue especially in developing countries which justifies the current research on this unique subject.

Objective:

To assess the medico legal cases along with underlying causes and their clinical outcome attending the casualty of tertiary care setting i.e. Liaquat University Hospital Hyderabad/Jamshoro, Sindh Pakistan during the period 01st Dec 2019 to 30th May 2020.

Methodology:

This descriptive cross sectional study was designed to assess the profile of 487 medico legal cases attending the emergency department of tertiary care Liaquat University Hospital Hyderabad/Jamshoro, Sindh Pakistan. The data was collected for period of six months by using a questionnaire that included the information regarding demographic determinants of medico legal cases (MLCs) and some information about medico legal officers (MLOs)&post-graduation; participants were interviewed on one-to-one basis. The data was analyzed by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) for windows version 23.0 for windows. The continuous variables were analyzed as mean ± standard deviations, the frequencies were measured for categorical variables.  Chi-Square (X2) test applied as test of significance at p-value ≤ 0.05 as cut-off for level of significance.

 

Results:

 Among 487 MLCs having gender wise distribution of male 277 (56.87%) and female 210 (43.13%). The number of poisoning cases were 76 (15.6%) in which males were 33 (6.77%) and females were 43 (8.82%),  RTA were reported among 51 (10.47%) and firearm injuries were recorded in 34 (6.98%).Out of all 487 respondents 129 were illiterate and 154 (31.6%) were only primary pass. There were 146 (29.9%) poor victims and 155(31.8%)  victims belonged to fairer socio-economic status; there was a significant association of gender identified with multiple factors like self-inflected injuries (p<0.02) as well as the poison taken by victim (p <0.05). Also, there were found significant association of gender with multiple determinants of MLCs like with self-inflected injuries (p=0.01).

Conclusion:

Among all medico legal cases, the poisoning due to various substances was the most commonly reported. The stab injuries, sexual assault, firearm injuries in term of occurrence were found significantly associated with lack of education. More elaborated research is needed to completely explore this important public health issue.

 

Key Words: Medico Legal Cases, Road Traffic Accident, Stab Injury, Poisoning, Sexual Assault, Fall from Height

 

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