期刊名称：Brazilian Journal of Forensic Sciences, Medical Law and Bioethics
电子版ISSN：2237-261X
出版年度：2017
卷号：6
期号：4
页码：500-521
DOI：10.17063/bjfs6(4)y2017500
出版社：Instituto Paulista de Estudos Bioéticos e Jurídicos
摘要：One of the main functions of Legal Medicine (LM) is to establish the cause of the deaths produced by violence.Even so, it is possible that the medical examiner is not able to determine it by not finding anatomical, pathological or toxicological cause to justify it, remaining the same as indeterminate.In this study, indeterminate causes of death (ICD) at Forensic Medicine Institute of Belo Horizonte (FMI-BH) were evaluated through a retrospective study of autopsy reports performed in 2008.The ICD comprised almost one-third of the 6,096 necropsies performed in that year.The cause of death was only indeterminate in 1,487 cases, was indeterminate per accidens in 217 deaths and indeterminate per se in 76 necropsies.In the majority of ICD (63.31%) there was no medical care prior to death and this group was statistically similar to the group of natural causes of death.These data indicate that the high number of ICD was due to the great demand of FMI-BH to perform examinations in individuals who had natural death and who did not receive medical care, for which there was no suspicion of external causes of death.Such cases should not have been referred for legal medical necropsy, but they were for lack of a Death Verification Service (DVS), responsible for investigating cases of natural deaths without medical assistance.It is common that in places without DVS such cases are unduly remitted to FMI, creating technical and material inconveniences, as well as statistical and epidemiological difficulties for public health and the whole society in contributing to the increase of ICD.
关键词：Autopsy; Undetermined cause of death; Forensic Medicine Institutes; Death Verification Service; Forensic Medicine
