A Three-Year Investigation on Corpses Referred to Legal Medicine Organization from An Iranian General Hospital: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Background: A Medical Certificate of Cause of Death (MCCD) is a legal and enforceable document issued by the attending physician. However, according to the instructions, in many cases such as sudden, unexplained, and extraordinary deaths, along with some uncommon causes, such as cases suspicious of murder, the deceased patient must be referred to the Iranian Legal Medicine Organization (ILMO). Moreover, the unnecessary referral of corpses to ILMO can increase the workload of the staff, finally confronting the family of the deceased with high emotional and financial costs.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, the medical records of all deceased patients referred from Hazrat Rasool Hospital to the ILMO (565 cases) in a three-year period from April 2016 to March 2019 were investigated and analyzed using SPSS22 software with chi-squared and T-test.

Results: Among all the patients who passed away during this time (4,239 patients), 565 were referred to ILMO, accounting for 13.3% of deaths. The most common causes of referral were car and motorcycle accidents, with a total prevalence of 27.1%, dead-on-arrival (DOA) prevalence of 21.3%, and death with an unknown cause prevalence of 15.3%. Significant correlation was also detected between causes of referral with gender, time of death, and age. For example, Car accidents and lawsuits against medical staff were more common in men and women, respectively.

Conclusion: Car and motorcycle accidents, DOA, and unknown causes were the most prevalent causes of referral in this study. In general, few studies have been conducted regarding the causes of referral of the deceased to the Legal Medicine Organization. In this study, we collected relevant variables to investigate this issue thoroughly.