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Park, Lee, Yun, Park, Lee, Choi, Kim, Park, Kim, Yoo, Lee, Gim, Yang, Choi, and Lee: The Statistical Analysis on the Postmortem Inspection Cases of National Forensic Service Seoul Institute in 2015
Original Article

Korean Journal of Legal Medicine 2017; 41(1): 1-6.

Published online: 28 February 2017

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7580/kjlm.2017.41.1.1

The Statistical Analysis on the Postmortem Inspection Cases of National Forensic Service Seoul Institute in 2015

Jeong-woo Park1, Soo-kyung Lee1, Woong-jae Yun1, Jong-pil Park1, Min-je Lee1, Seung-woo Choi1, Yu-hoon Kim2, Seong Hwan Park3, Jang Han Kim4, Seong Ho Yoo5, Soong-Deok Lee5, Jae-yong Gim6, Kyung-moo Yang1, Young-shik Choi1, Han-young Lee1

1Medical Examiner's Office, National Forensic Service, Wonju, Korea.

2Sewon Forensic Medical Services, Seoul, Korea.

3Department of Legal Medicine, Korea University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.

4Department of Medical Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.

5Department of Forensic Medicine, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.

6Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, 8 Wide Area Crime Scene Investigation Team, Seoul, Korea.

Correspondence to: Han-young Lee. Medical Examiner's Office, National Forensic Service, 10 Ipchun-ro, Wonju 26460, Korea. Tel: +82-2-2600-4602, Fax: +82-2-2600-4828, nisi1210@korea.kr

Received 9 November 2016       Revised 8 February 2017       Accepted 25 February 2017

© Copyright 2017 by the Korean Society for Legal Medicine

(open-access):

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Since March 1, 2015, the National Forensic Service Seoul Institute has commenced postmortem inspections at the death scene in agreement with the Korean National Police Agency. Included regions were mainly Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency Wide Area 8 (Gangseo, Yangcheon, Guro police stations), and several other areas. In total, 837 postmortem inspection cases from March 1 to December 31, 2015, were analyzed statistically. Of these, 168 were autopsy cases, and the rates were 20% (67 cases) in Gangseo Police, 14.5% (30 cases) in Yangcheon Police, and 22% (57 cases) in Guro Police stations. For 269 cases of “unknown cause of death”, the autopsy rates were 44% in Gangseo Police, 36% in Yangcheon Police, and 47% in Guro Police stations. For 82 cases of fall from height, autopsy rates were 17% (n=14). Of the 133 cases of hanging, 121 cases were classified as suicide at the scene with a 2.5% (n=3) autopsy rate. Twelve cases were classified as an undetermined manner of death at the scene with a 33% (n=4) autopsy rate. The distribution of the “manner of death” was natural death for 29% (n=250), unnatural death for 38% (n=318), and other and undetermined manner of death for 32% (n=269) of cases. Proportions of dispatch times were 49.2% (412 cases) during work hours (09:00-18:00), 15.7% (n=131) during evening hours (18:00-21:00), 13% (n=110) at night (21:00-24:00), 10% (n=88) at dawn (24:00-06:00), and 11% (n=96) during morning hours (06:00-09:00). The male to female sex ratio was 1.96:1 (556:281). These statistics are valuable for evaluation of postmortem inspections by experts.

Keywords: Postmortem inspection, Death scene, Autopsy rate, Cause of death

Figures and Tables

Table 1

Number of postmortem inspection cases

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Table 2

Number of autopsy cases

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Table 3

Number of each manner of death

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Table 4

Dispatching time

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Table 5

Male and female ratio

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Table 6

Classifications of suicide (fall from height, hanging, and intoxication) and unknown cause of death

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Table 7

Autopsy rate of unknown cause of death

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Table 8

Number of death due to poisoning

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Acknowledgments

Authors thank to Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency and especially to Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, 8 Wide Area Crime Scene Investigation Team.
This research was supported by a grant for Development of Scientific investigation funded by the National Forensic Service (2016-Forensic Medicine-03).

Notes

Conflicts of Interest No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.

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