Trauma during pregnancy: Assessment of cases from a forensic medical aspect

Abstract

Evaluation of trauma during pregnancy puts forth a difference from other traumas in forensic medicine. The purpose of this study is to investigate forensic cases of trauma happened in pregnancy, share the findings with the literature and to scrutinize the legal procedures during this period. Applied trauma cases between 1stjanuary 2010 and 31st december 2019 were evaluated retrospectively by forensic medicine clinic of EskisehirOsmangazi University Medical Faculty . Of these cases, pregnant women were included to the study. Data including age, pregnancy week, origin of the event, physical findings of the trauma, effects of the trauma to the pregnancy outcome and whether radiologic examination could be done, were interpret. 174 trauma cases were perused in this scope of the study. Of these, 61 (35.1%) were subjected to violence, 113 traumas (64.9%) were due to accident. 6 (3.4%) pregnant women had lethal injury, 45 cases (25.9%) needed stationary treatment and 3 had pregnancy loss due to trauma. Our findings were concordant with the literature. Effects of trauma on fetus should be determined by the clinical evaluation of the documents recorded during obstetric follow-up in the hospital. Forensically, estimation of the effects of trauma on the pregnancy outcome should be determined by studying collaboratively with the other medical sciences especially obstetrics and gynecology. [Med-Science 2020; 9(4.000): 1041-4]

Keywords

• pregnancy
• forensic medicine
• trauma