A postmortem study of unexpected natural pediatric deaths in Egypt

Abstract

Abstract Background Identifying the causes of unexpected pediatric deaths is a clinical, medicolegal, and humanitarian requirement. This study included autopsied children aged 1 year. Pneumonia accounted for 61.8% of infection-related deaths, followed by myocarditis (12.7%) and septicemia (12.7%). Regarding systems that had fatal pathologies, respiratory causes were responsible for 64% of explained natural deaths, whereas cardiovascular and central nervous system diseases accounted for 11% and 7.7% of explained natural deaths, respectively. Considering prodromes, alarming symptoms were reported before death in 51.2% of cases, whereas death occurred without alarming manifestations in 29.9% of cases. The rest of the cases (18.9%) were abandoned children with unavailable antemortem data. Conclusions Present results serve as a valuable reference dataset for deaths in developmental stages in Egypt that guides forensic practitioners in managing child deaths.

Keywords

• Pediatric deaths
• Unexpected natural death
• Explained
• Unexplained
• Undetermined
• Egypt