Assessment of Sudden Natural Deaths in Medico-Legal Autopsies at Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37506/ijfmt.v17i4.19936Keywords:
Autopsy, Cardiovascular System,Natural Death, Sociodemographic Variables.Abstract
Background and Aim: Sudden natural death that occurred apparently to a healthy individual sometimes
creates suspicions of foul play, thus subjected to medicolegal (ML) examinations. The study aims to assess the
sociodemographic profile of the sudden natural death cases brought for medicolegal autopsy and identify the
commonest accountable cause of sudden natural death.
Material and Methods: The study was conducted in the Department of Forensic Medicine, at tertiary care teaching
hospital, India for the duration of 1 year. During the study period total of 784 cases were brought for medicolegal
autopsies to mortuary, out of which 50 cases were found to be sudden natural death constituting an overall burden
of 6.37%. All the cases of autopsy having the opinion of natural death as a cause of death and cases brought dead
in casualty without evidence of unnatural cause were included. The distribution of the cases concerning various
sociodemographic variables was presented as frequencies and percentages.
Results: Male predominance was observed among the sudden death cases as out of 50 cases, 40 cases (80%) were
male, and 10 cases were female with a sex ratio of 4:1. Most of the cases were reported from the adult age group
and the commonly involved age group was 31 to 40 years. Among the causes of sudden death, the most involved
organ system was the cardiovascular system (44%), followed by the gastrointestinal system (22%), respiratory
system (18%), central nervous system (14%) and genitourinary system (2%).
Conclusion: Cardiac causes are the most common cause of sudden natural death among the adult population in
the study site. Increased frequency of sudden deaths among urban, married and adult male populations might be
due to sedentary lifestyles in urban areas and increased stress among married individuals due to workload and
family responsibilities, indicating a physical and mental disequilibrium in modern times resulting in this type of
unexpected deaths.
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