Asphyxial Deaths in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: A Two Years Retrospective Study

Mofrih Hegazy,Abdullah Aldossary,Ahmed Alyahya,Hussain Bahshwan

doi:10.21608/ajfm.2016.18538

Abstract

A retrospective study was carried out on 172 cases of asphyxial death autopsied at the Forensic Medicine Centre in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia during the period from January 2012 to December 2013. Of the 172 cases, 111 (64.5%) were male and 61 (35.5%) were female, with approximately 51% of the cases being male manual workers and 28.5% female housemaids; the most common age group was 21-30 years (52.3%). Saudi nationals comprised only a small proportion of cases (11.6%), the majority of deaths were amongst foreign workers. Suicide was the most common manner of death (87.8%) followed by accident (10.5%), and few homicides (1.7%). As expected, the most common cause of death was hanging (87.8%) followed by drowning (6.4%), ligature strangulation (3.5%) and chemical asphyxia, i.e., carbon monoxide poisoning (2.3%). Alcohol, amphetamine and cannabinoids were found in 7.6%, 2.3% and 1.7% of cases and carboxyhaemoglobin was found in 2.3%.

Highlights

Riyadh is the capital city of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and includes 20 governorates with a total population of 6,167,262 people (24% of the Kingdom population)
The term asphyxia is defined as “a condition caused by interference with respiration or lack of oxygen in respired air, the result of which organs and tissues are deprived of oxygen, causing unconsciousness or death ”(Reddy, 2009).Asphyxial deaths are common in forensic practice, and it is important to determine the manner of death in these cases
Males and females are both exposed to stress but it seems that in our societies, males are dominating and having more exposure to the external environment. This coincides with Gargi et al (1992) and so PatelAnkur et al (2013) who reported that males are the most common victims of violent asphyxial deaths, with a male to female ratio 1.69:1

Summary

Introduction

Riyadh is the capital city of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and includes 20 governorates with a total population of 6,167,262 people (24% of the Kingdom population). In this region, all medico-legal autopsies are performed by staffs of the Forensic Medicine Centre in Riyadh. Asphyxial deaths are often classified into the following methods: strangulation (hanging, manual, ligature), suffocation (environmental or entrapment, smothering, choking, mechanical [positional, traumatic], suffocating gases), chemical asphyxia (carbon monoxide [CO], hydrogen cyanide, hydrogen sulphide), and drowning (DiMaio and DiMaio, 2001)

Objectives

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Discussion

Conclusion