ABSTRACT

Introduction:

In cases in which there is no vital risk, reporting a vital risk in temporary forensic reports leads to severe judicial consequences, such as limi-ting the freedom of the suspect; and reporting no vital risk in definitive reports given later can decrease confidence in the physician.

Purpose:

The aim of this study is to research the consistency between the vi-tal risks in temporary reports given by physicians and definitive reports given by the Forensic Medicine Department of Gazi University Medical Faculty of forensic cases dealt with by the Forensic Medicine Department of Gazi Univer-sity Medical Faculty; and to determine the difficulty faced by physicians who are not forensic medicine specialists in distinguishing exposure to vital risk in forensic cases.

Methods:

The temporary reports of 449 of 540 subjects (83.1%) for whom definitive reports were given by Gazi University Medical Faculty Department of Forensic Medicine between 1997 and 2004 were obtained from the Gazi University Medical Faculty Hospital archives. The reports were evaluated ret-rospectively with respect to age, gender, type of event, injury location, and vital risk presence in temporary and definitive reports, and they were analysed

Results:

62.0% (335) of the forensic cases involved males, and 38.5% (205) females. Traffic accidents ranked first, with 71.9% (388). The most common injury location was the head and neck. There was a statistically significant dif-ference between vital risk reported in temporary and definitive reports; 46.6% (82) of the cases with a temporary report of vital risk had no vital risk in the definitive report (p<0.05).

Conclusion:

We think that differences between the vital risk revealed in tem-porary forensic reports given by physicians who are not forensic medicine spe-cialists and definitive reports given by forensic medicine specialists could be eliminated with an increase in the use of objective criteria when giving forensic reports by the latter group.