Abstract
Objective: Pediatric medico-legal events are important public health problems in the pediatric emergency service. They are considered among the leading causes of pediatric disabilities and deaths. We performed a study to evaluate the demographic features of the medico-legal cases who presented to our pediatric emergency service.
Material and Methods: During the 2-years study period, a total of 1586 patients presented to our service and were treated as medico-legal cases. Information about the patients was obtained from hospital records and analysed by the medical staff of the pediatric emergency service.
Results: 671 male (42.3%) and 915 female (57.7%) patients were included in our study. The majority of the patients were between 11- 14 years of age (n=397; 25.0%). Drug intake was the major complaint (n= 827; 52.1%) of our patients. Winter was the most common season (n= 486; 30.6%) and January (n=182; 11.5%) was the most common month for medico-legal admissions. The majority of the patients (n=551; 34.75%) presented to our emergency between 18-24 hours. 947 cases (59.7%) had health risks at the time of presentation.
Conclusion: Developing effective preventive strategies is essential to prevent child and adolescent injuries
Keywords: Adolescent, Child, Medico-legal, Pediatric emergency
References
- World Health Organisation. World Report on Child Injury Prevention. Accessed: 12 September 2015. Available from: http://www.who. int/ violence_injury_ prevention / child/injury/world_report/report/ en/
- Judy K. Unintentional injuries in pediatrics. Pediatr Rev 2011;32:431-38.
- Sever M, Saz EU, Koşargelir M. An evaluation of the pediatric medico-legal admissions to a tertiary hospital emergency department. Turk J Trauma & Emergency Surgery 2010;16: 260-67.
- Rivara FP, Calonge N, Thomson RS. Population-based study of unintentional injury incidence and impact during childhood. Am Public Health 1989;79: 990-4.
Copyright and license
Copyright © 2016 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.
