Sudden natural brain haemorrhage fatalities: A 10 years autopsy review at Kuala Lumpur

This study was aimed to determine the natural causes of sudden death due to intracranial hemorrhage and to analyze the epidemiological aspects of death due to intracranial hemorrhage for the past ten years. Among 68 cases that were retrieved from Department of Pathology of University Malaya, 54 of them were confirmed death due to intracranial hemorrhage of natural causes. All the autopsies were performed in the Forensic Pathology Unit, University of Malaya. The data was collected from 1 January 1996 until 31 December 2005. There were 40 male and 14 female victims involved in this study. More than half of the victims were married (53.7%) and majority were Malaysian. Among 54 cases reported, 24 victims (44.4%) were Chinese. From our study, we found that most of the victims died were between 41 to 50 years of age (28% of total cases). Subarachnoid hemorrhage was the commonest type of intracranial hemorrhages seen in 46.3% of the cases. 31 out of 54 (57.4%) of the victim had non-professional jobs such as coffee shop worker, operator and factory workers. Large number of the victims (46%) had mixed symptoms prior to their death. Based on our study, 67% of the victim died between 1201 to 2400 hours. More than 50% of the cases had history of severe hypertension (28%), there was no history in 31% at all prior to their death. 63% of the victims had weight of brain between the ranges of 1001–1500 gram. The highest cases were reported in the year 2005 which is about 22.2% percent of total death.