PMID: 8948128Oct 25, 1996Paper

Who dies at A&E? The role of forensic pathology in the audit of mortality in an emergency medicine department

Forensic Science International : Synergy
E Seow, G Lau

Abstract

The authors reviewed a total of 481 deaths, which occurred in an accident and emergency (A&E) department of a major general hospital, over a 3-year-period, from 1 January, 1992 to 31 December, 1994. Of these, 428 (89.0%) were referred to the coroner, with full medico-legal autopsies being conducted in 236 (55.1%) of the latter. There was a marked preponderance of male subjects (male:female ratio = 1.86) and, not unexpectedly, the likelihood of an autopsy being performed decreased with the patient's age. Nevertheless, all patients who died from trauma (or unnatural causes) underwent autopsies, irrespective of age. In all, autopsies were conducted for 70 traumatic and 166 natural deaths, with the mean age (95% CI) of the former group being some 19 years less than that of the latter (33.2 (28.4-38.1) vs. 52.0 (48.6-55.4), (P < 0.001). A comparison of the provisional causes of death (as recorded by the attending physicians in their clinical notes) with the autopsy findings yielded a higher diagnostic accuracy for traumatic deaths than for natural fatalities (correct diagnoses: 44/70 vs. 36/166; discordant diagnoses: 2/70 vs. 24/166, P < 0.01). This difference was accentuated after the patients who were dead upon arrival were exclud...Continue Reading

References

Oct 12, 1991·BMJ : British Medical Journal·R Saracci
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Jun 5, 1993·Lancet·S M Cordner
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Citations

Mar 24, 2004·Resuscitation·Peter VanbrabantMarc Sabbe
Jan 14, 1999·The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Surgery·P T IauS T Chan
Jul 21, 2006·Traffic Injury Prevention·Basem Y HenaryJeff R Crandall
Dec 5, 2009·International Journal for Quality in Health Care : Journal of the International Society for Quality in Health Care·Kentaro SakaiKimiharu Iwadate
Oct 27, 2009·European Journal of Emergency Medicine : Official Journal of the European Society for Emergency Medicine·Marc De Leeuw, Werner Jacobs
May 9, 2009·Emergency Medicine Australasia : EMA·Sally ClunasGeoffrey K Isbister
Aug 7, 2012·Emergency Medicine Australasia : EMA·Justin Curran, David McD Taylor
May 5, 2000·The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews·H M McIntosh, P Olliaro

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