Citation

Dang C, Jabre P, Dru M, Auger H, Margenet A, Combes X. Ann. Fr. Med. Urgence 2013; 3(1): 9-13.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s13341-012-0246-1

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Death certificate filling is difficult in out-of-hospital emergency medicine. The circumstances of death may often appear "suspicious", leading to a medico legal obstacle. Our study aims to verify accordance of the obstacle noticed on the death certificates signed by the emergency physician, with the French recommendations.

METHODS: From two years local register about patients managed by the prehospital emergency medical unit and deceased before arriving in the hospital, all the cases whose for the physician noticed the obstacle were recorded. The death characteristics were recorded. For each file, we checked if the medicolegal obstacle was in accordance with the French recommendations. The judicial consequences for the obstacle were obtained from the prosecuting attorney.

RESULTS: 15842 interventions were done. For 183 deceased, a medico legal obstacle was noticed. Among the 179 available files, all the situations with obstacle noticed complied with the French directives: unexplained sudden death (73; 41%), suicide (62; 35%), road accident (16; 9%), non-identified dead body (10; 6%), occupational accident (6; 3%), home accident (4; 2%), homicide (4; 4%), unknown cause of death (4; 2%). Among the 116 available files from the prosecutor, 49 (42%) had a toxicological analysis and 50 (43%) had an autopsy.

CONCLUSION: The study of the deceased patients during out-of-hospital activity showed that the medicolegal obstacle was always noticed in accordance with the national recommendations. Despite of hostile conditions of the out-of-hospital context, we didn't notice excess of medico legal obstacle. © 2012 Société française de médecine d'urgence and Springer-Verlag France.

Language: en

Keywords

human; homicide; suicide; autopsy; cause of death; traffic accident; emergency care; cadaver; toxicology; article; legal aspect; sudden death; occupational accident; death certificate; home accident; emergency physician; Certificate; Medico legal obstacle; Out-of-hospital