Ten years autopsy study of violent asphyxial deaths

Introduction:An increasing death rate as a result of violence constitutes a large group in medico-legal autopsies especially deaths due to asphyxia which are one of the most important causes in violent deaths. Analysis and interpretations of cases of hanging, ligature strangulation, throttling, suffocation, traumatic asphyxia and drowning is presented in this paper.

Aims and Objective:The present study was carried out with a view to study the incidence and postmortem finding of violent asphyxial deaths with regard to key features that help to differentiate between different violent asphyxial deaths.

Method:A ten years retrospective study of all medico-legal autopsies of violent asphyxial deaths was undertaken between 1st January 2006 to 31st December 2015 in the department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, Government. Medical College, Amritsar, Punjab, India.

Results: Incidence of violent asphyxia deaths is 3.98% of total autopsies. Hanging (50.37%) was most common method of asphyxiation followed by drowning (29.48%).Males (68.06%) outnumbered females (31.94%) with male to female ratio of 2.13:1. Most affected age group was 21–30 years among both the sexes.Most of the victims were married 233 (57.25%) compared to unmarried 100 (24.57%) and unknown 74 (18.18%) cases.Suicide (53.56%) was most common manner of death followed by homicide (19.90%), accidental was least common (17.20%) and in (9.34%) cases manner was unascertained. More cases 52.83% of violent asphyxial deaths were reported from rural area as compared to urban (27.76%) and residence status of 18.18% cases were unknown.