ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to contribute to research aimed at reducing preventable childhood deaths by describing the general characteristics of childhood medicolegal deaths in Samsun.

Records concerning 301 medicolegal deaths in the 0- 18 age group subjected to postmortem examination over a 6-year period from 2006 to 2011 in Samsun were examined. Data were analyzed with the help of SPSS (version 20.0).

Males represented 66.1% of cases. Mean age was 7.75.7 (0-18) years, and the largest number of cases (26.6%) was in the 1-4 age group. Following forensic investigation, manner of death was determined as accidental in 78.4% of children. Of the 236 child deaths identified as due to accidents, 47.4% were the result of traffic accidents. The most common cause of death in the 34 cases assessed as natural death was infectious diseases (47.1%).

Since a large part of the injury-related childhood deaths were caused by accidents, and particularly traffic accidents, we think that such deaths could be significantly reduced through simple and easily applied measures.

Keywords: Forensic medicine, Childhood, Medicolegal death