DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2019.v07i11.062

Pages: 3787-3790

Medico-legal cases are an integral part of medical practice that is frequently encountered by medical officers working in Emergency department. Hence the present study was conducted to analyse different categories of medico legal cases, characteristics of the victims and frequency and their pattern at emergency department of tertiary care hospital, Kakinada to highlight the vulnerable gender, age, residence and the cause. It is a record based cross sectional study in which all the MLC cases registered in MLC record book during a period of 3 years (Jan 2016 – Dec 2018) were included. Cases found non medico-legal were excluded. Findings were expressed in numbers and percentages. Total cases were 1050, of which 815 (77.62%) were males and 235 (22.38%) were females. Maximum cases were from the age group of 21-40 years i.e., 502 (47.8%). 793 (75.5%) were residents of urban area. Most of the MLC’s registered were due to road traffic accidents - RTA (73.9%) followed by Industrial injuries (9.6%), fall (6%), burn (4.28%), assault (3.4%), poisoning (2.19%), & others (0.5%). Maximum cases were from Urban 793 (75.5%) and Rural 257 (24.5 %).The present study shows most of the victims are males in the age group of 20-40 years and RTAs accounts the major part of MLCs. By giving proper education, training of safety standards and awareness among public the frequency of these cases can be reduced. Strict laws should be enforced to reduce the road traffic accidents. The doctors who are involved in handling MLCs to be more trained.