Retrospective study of pediatric autopsy findings in a tertiary care center: an evaluation

Abstract

Paediatrics is a branch of medicine which is concerned with wellbeing of infants, children, adolescents, their physical, mental, and psychological development. Paediatric forensic autopsy is useful to evaluate us the natural and unnatural childhood deaths, their reasons, steps for prevention and their management, which is both useful to the branch of Forensic Medicine and the Medical researchers. A 3year retrospective study was conducted in M.P. Shah Government Medical College, Jamnagar during the period of January 2014 to December 2016. Out of total 3743 autopsies performed, a total of 253 cases belonging to paediatric age-group were the material of the study. Accidental deaths are the most common manner of deaths and mostly affected age-group is 12-17 years. The leading cause of death are burns, drowning, road traffic accidents and snake bite. Accidental burns and suicidal hanging were more common in females in the agegroup 12-17 years. Accidental drowning and RTA were common in the males. In the present study, snake bite envenomation was also one of the leading causes of unnatural deaths in children and was mostly seen in the age range of 2-10 years. In India, both natural and unnatural childhood deaths are emerging as major public health problem. Various educational programmes, preventive strategies, and dissemination of information are necessary to create awareness and is must to reduce the unnatural deaths.