A CROSS-SECTIONAL DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH ON THE IMPORTANCE OF AUTOPSIES IN ORDER TO MINIMIZE THE ROAD TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS FATALITIES IN TERM OF AGE, GENDER AND SIGHT OF INJURY: HOW THE PROCESS AUTOPSY ASSISTS THE LEGAL PROCEEDINGS AND HELPS TO ASSERTION THE CAUSE OF DEATH

Objective: This research studies the victim’s demographic distribution in the road traffic accidents which were brought for the medico legal autopsy, identification of the injury fatality, month wise autopsies variations and autopsied users of the road.

Methods: Design of the research was descriptive cross-sectional held at the Services Hospital, Lahore in the time duration of April, 2015 to March, 2016. All the dead bodies which were presented to police for external/partial autopsy were not made a part of the research study. Collected data was analyzed on SPSS.

Results: RTA victims were 581 cases (27.8%) including 324 autopsies in the age group of 19 – 40 years (55.8%), male to female ratio was observed as 510 males (87.8%) and 71 females (12.2%) with a proportion of seven to one with a significant p-value as (0.05). Head injury caused majority of the death cases as observed in 386 victims (66.4%), 84 chest victims (14.5%), 50 cases of multiple traumatic injuries (8.6%) and 17 pelvis injury cases (2.9%). Pedestrians and motorcyclists were in majority respectively 389 pedestrians (67%) and 122 motorcyclists (21%). Every month average autopsies were carried out as (48.4 ± 7.46) without any statistical variation in the count of autopsies.

Conclusion: We observed in the incidence of autopsies that males were dominant in number over females. But for the significant variation in both groups need proper association of sex in the incidence of Road Traffic Accidents and at the same time for the females autopsied compliance.

Keywords: Epidemiology, Pakistan, Road traffic accidents (RTA), Autopsy, Accidents, Numerical data and Statistics