Journal List > Korean J Leg Med > v.41(3) > 1088019

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Won, Park, Choi, Aum, Kim, Seo, Choi, Lee, Yu, Park, Choi, Kim, Lee, Yun, Kim, Kim, Park, Kim, Yoo, Lee, Gim, Yang, Lee, and Choi: The Statistical Analysis on the Postmortem Inspection Cases of National Forensic Service Seoul Institute in 2016
Original Article

Korean Journal of Legal Medicine 2017; 41(3): 67-72.

Published online: 31 August 2017

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7580/kjlm.2017.41.3.67

The Statistical Analysis on the Postmortem Inspection Cases of National Forensic Service Seoul Institute in 2016

You-jin Won1, Jeong-woo Park1, Seung-gyu Choi1, Nahyun Aum1, Dong-yeong Kim1, Won-jun Seo1, Seung-woo Choi1, Min-je Lee1, Mi-young Yu1, Jong-pil Park1, Minsung Choi1, Seong Ho Kim1, Soo-kyung Lee1, Woong-jae Yun1, Yu-hoon Kim2, Yi Suk Kim2, Seong Hwan Park3, Jang Han Kim4, Seong Ho Yoo5, Soong-Deok Lee5, Jae-yong Gim6, Kyung-moo Yang1, Han-young Lee7, Young-shik Choi8

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.

7National Forensic Service, Seoul Institute, Seoul, Korea.

8National Forensic Service, Wonju, Korea.

Correspondence to: Kyung-moo Yang. Medical Examiner's Office, National Forensic Service, 10 Ipchun-ro, Wonju 26460, Korea. Tel: +82-2-2600-4800, Fax: +82-2-2600-4828, rudany@korea.kr

Received 11 May 2017       Revised 22 August 2017       Accepted 26 August 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

From January 1, 2016 to December 31, 2016, a total of 1147 postmortem inspection cases in Area 8, Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency (Gangseo, Yangcheon, and Guro police stations) were statistically analyzed. Autopsies were performed in 205 cases (17.9%), and the autopsy rates were 17.6% (75/426 cases) in the Gangseo police station, 9.5% (34/357 cases) in the Yangcheon police station, and 24.3% (82/337 cases) in the Guro police station. For 288 cases with an unknown cause of death, the autopsy rates were 70.0% (60/87 cases) in the Gangseo police station, 28.6% (26/91 cases) in the Yangcheon police station, and 63.1% (65/103 cases) in the Guro police station. For 65 cases due to fall from height, the autopsy rate was 7.7% (n=5). Of the 187 cases due to hanging, 155 cases were classified as suicide at the scene with a 4.5% (n=7) autopsy rate and 32 cases were classified as an undetermined manner of death at the scene with a 15.6% (n=5) autopsy rate. The distribution of the “manner of death” was natural death, 45% (n=516); unnatural death, 29.9% (n=343); and other and undetermined, 25.1% (n=288). Proportions of dispatch times were 50.9% (584 cases) during work hours (09:00–18:00), 13.8% (n=158) during evening hours (18:00–21:00), 13.4% (n=154) at night (21:00–00:00), 11% (n=126) at dawn (00:00–06:00), and 10.9% (n=125) during morning hours (06:00–09:00). The male-to-female ratio was 1.86:1 (746:401). These statistics are valuable for the evaluation of postmortem inspections by experts.

Keywords: Postmortem inspection, Autopsy rate, Cause of death, Statistics

Figures and Tables

Table 1

Number of postmortem inspection cases

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Values are presented as number (%).

Table 2

Number of autopsy cases

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Values are presented as number (%).

Table 3

Number of each manner of death

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Values are presented as number (%).

Table 4

Dispatching time

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Values are presented as number (%).

Table 5

Male and female ratio

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Values are presented as number (%).

Table 6

Autopsy rates in the cases of fall from height and hanging

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Values are presented as number (%)

Table 7

Autopsy rates in the cases of unknown cause of death

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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 (2017-Forensic Medicine-03).

Notes

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

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