Citation

Sasi Kanth Z, Ramarao B. Med. Legal Update 2019; 19(2): 286-288.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, R.K. Sharma and Institute of Medico-Legal Publications)

DOI

10.5958/0974-1283.2019.00189.0

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

An increasing death rate as a result of violence constitutes a large group in medicolegal autopsies. Specially, deaths due to asphyxia are one of the most important causes in violence deaths. During the 5-year period from January 2013 to October 2018, there were 134 asphyxial deaths autopsied by the Department of Forensic Medicine, ACSR Government Medical College,Nellore. Asphyxial deaths comprise 15.7% of all forensic autopsies; 20.8% of the cases are aged between 30 and 39 years, and the average age was 41.9 years. Males constitute 79.8% of all the cases. The most frequent method of asphyxiation death is hanging (56 cases, 61.8%), followed by drowning (32.6%) and More violent methods, such as ligature or manual strangulations, constitute 3.1% and 2.5% of all asphyxial deaths, respectively. Although it was varying according to the methods of asphyxiation, suicide was found to be the manner of death in the majority of the cases. © 2019, World Informations Syndicate. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Autopsy; Manner of death; Cause of death; Method of asphyxiation