Multiple Organ Pathologies Underlying in Sudden Natural Deaths

Abstract

Aim of this study was to identify cause of death and related histological findings, and to find relationship between them in sudden natural deaths (SND) that were subjected to medicolegal autopsy. Totally 209 SND cases were enrolled in the study. After medicolegal autopsy, cause and manner of death were identified. A formula was formed to show the ratio of frequency of histological findings to cause of deaths in systems. By this formula, affected systems were compared. In SND cases, the ratio of extracardiac findings to extracardiac deaths was higher than that of cardiovascular findings to cardiovascular deaths (5.53 versus 2.00). We concluded that cardiovascular pathologies are still the most common in SND. The higher rate of extracardiac histological findings doesn’t mean higher rate of SND due to extracardiac causes. Therefore, histological findings must be evaluated with great attention for preventing incorrect conclusions to identify causes of deaths in SND. [Med-Science 2012; 1(1.000): 13-26]

Keywords

• sudden natural death
• cause of death
• histological findings
• manner of death, sudden cardiac death
• medicolegal autopsy
• forensic medicine