A record based study of frequency and pattern of medico-legal cases reported at a tertiary care hospital in Miraj

Abstract

Background: Medico-legal case (MLC) can be defined as a case of injury or ailment, etc., in which investigations by the law-enforcing agencies are essential to fix the responsibility regarding the causation of the said injury or ailment. Medico-legal cases are an integral part of medical practice that is frequently encountered by medical officers working in casualty. Hence the present study is carried out to find out the frequency and pattern of medico-legal cases reported at a tertiary care hospital and to highlight the vulnerable gender, age, residence and the cause. Methods: It is a record based cross sectional study in which all the MLC cases registered in MLC record book during a period of 6 months (January 13– June 13) were included. Cases found non medico-legal were excluded. Variables considered were gender, age, residence and cause. Findings were expressed in numbers and percentages. Results: Total cases were 2350, of which 1866 (79.4%) were males and 484 (20.6%) were females. Maximum cases were from the age group of 21-30 years i.e., 828 (35.2%). 1440 (61.27%) were residents of urban area. Most of the medico-legal cases registered were due to assault (27.2%) followed by medical examination of prisoners(25.9%), road traffic accidents (19.7%), fall (6.9%), snake bite (6.6%), poisoning (4.3%), domestic injuries (4.3%), unknown bite (2.2%), unknown found at railway station (1.6%), brought dead (0.6%), burn (0.2%) & others (0.5%). Conclusions: Majority of the victims were males, young adults and urban inhabitants. Most common indication for medico-legal cases was assault followed by medical check-up of prisoners and road traffic accidents.