Pattern of Medico-Legal Cases in a Tertiary Care Centre at Sangli, Maharashtra: A Retrospective Study
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37506/mlu.v20i2.1052Keywords:
Casualty, Tertiary care centre, Medico-legal cases, Road traffic accidents and Poisoning.Abstract
A medico-legal case is the one where besides the medical treatment; investigations by law enforcing agencies
are essential to fix the responsibility regarding the present state/condition of the patient. Medico-legal cases
therefore have both medical and legal implications. Medico-legal cases are an integral part of medical
practice that is frequently encountered by medical officers working in casualty. The casualty department is
a backbone of every hospital because apart from medical emergencies, it also deals with the medico-legal
cases. The study was conducted in a retrospective manner and all the medico-legal cases which came to the
emergency department of the BVDU & MC hospital during January 2018 to December 2018 were studied.
The study revealed that majority of the victims in this study population was males (70.99%) as compare to
females (29.01%). Most of the victims were belonging to younger age group (21-30 years). Highest numbers
of victims in the study population were Hindus (86.82%) and belonged to rural area (72.75%). Road traffic
accident cases (40.22%) were highest in number among all registered medico-legal cases.
