Forensic epidemiology of childhood deaths-Gaziantep (2005-2012)

Abstract

In the present study, judicial death cases during childhood were assessed retrospectively for description and discussion of the data obtained in company with the literature were aimed. For the purposes of this study, the postmortem examination and post-mortem records of the cases between the ages of 0-18, who had died between January 2005 and December 2012. The sociodemographic characteristics and origin of the 1113 cases, the type of the incident, the distribution of the causes of death post-mortems were evaluated. The mean age of the 1113 cases was 6.77±0.17 (mean ± SE), and 66.8% cases were male, while 33.1% were female, (Male/Female: 2/1). The greatest part of all the deaths comprised fatal accidents with cases 61.4%, followed by (26.1%) suspicious deaths, 4.3% homicides, and 4.1% suicides the most common cause for death was detected as traffic accident by 33.5% cases among the 48 cases who were homicided, 58.3% were in the 15-18 age group. Consequently, it was observed that child death cases occurred in our territory were frequently accidental and traffic accidents were more common.