Abstract

Background: Human life is very precious and death ends this in natural or unnatural way. Medical jurisprudence differentiates weather the death has occurred as a natural process or there is some unnatural, criminal act behind.

Aim: To access various causes of death.

Study Design: Observational study

Place and duration of study: Department of Forensic Medicine & Toxicology,LUMHS Jamshoro &Liaquat University Hospital Hyderabad from 1stJanuary 2015 to 31stDecember 2019.

Methodology: Nine hundred and eighty two death cases reported during this 5-year period were included. Data was obtained from the relatives and available evidences on a predesigned proforma with no age limits and death as the inclusion criteria, excluding the non-medicolegal deaths.

Results: There were 445(45.3%)road traffic accidents,164(16.7%) fire arm injury, 150(15.3%) asphyxial death, 78(7.9%) assault, 34(3.5%) train accident, 18(1.8%) poisoning, 12(1.2%) electric shock, undetermined 9(0.9%) and 72 (7.3%) other cases.

Conclusion: Most of the deaths were caused by road traffic accidents followed by fire arm and asphyxia.

Keywords: Forensic autopsy, Road traffic accident, Fire arm injury, Asphyxial death