Study of Creating Functional Disorder Ratio Scale for Locomotor System Restrictions

Abstract

Objective:The present study aims to emphasize the importance of evaluating locomotor system limitations in terms of functional impairment or loss in injury, traffic accident and occupational accident reports and to develop new scale evaluating percentage loss of an organ in locomotor system restrictions using Disability Rates Scale to contribute to the improvement and updating of present guidelines.Methods:Cases admitted to Forensic Medicine Department of a University Hospital between 2017 and 2018 and issued an opinion on whether their “Locomotor System Restrictions due to Injury were Functional Impairment-Loss” were examined and anatomic/functional organ loss rates were re-calculated using our new scale. The rates were compared to the results of reports issued by our department. The data of the study were analyzed using SPSS 22.0 software.Results:When the examination findings of 70 cases included in our study were re-evaluated based on the new scale, a result different from the reports was noticed in five cases (7.1%). When these cases were examined according to the new scale, the restrictions in three cases were observed to be very close to 10% limit of organ loss percentages.Conclusion:As locomotor system restrictions are quite common and have a significant impact on criminal cases, a new scale was formed using disability rates scale to have standardized objective criteria while evaluating locomotor system restrictions and usage of this new scale was explained in detail. Percentage value of functional disorder rate due to the restrictions in the organs was found to be more important especially at organ functional impairment limit level (10%) and standardized scale should be used in the examination.

Keywords

• forensic medicine
• functional impairment
• functional loss
• restriction
• guidelines