Investigating the cause of geriatric deaths in 2004, İzmir Dokuz Eylül University Hospital

The population datas of WHO, and numerous researches which conducted about thesubject shows that the population of elderly people is increasing rapidly. In developedcountries, new health policies are launching out according to the datas of health and deathstatistics and new precautions are taken to decrease the burden to the economy that elderlypeople cause. Increasing elderly population is bringing about medicolegal and ethicalproblems beside economical and social ones. It is expected that the problem will also effectour country, which is considered as only effecting the developed countries for now.The aim of this work is, to put forward the causes of deaths and to investigate thecharacteristics of the cases with forensic dimensions of people whom have applied to IzmirDokuz Eylul University Practice and Research Hospital of age 65 and above.The patients of whom died in 2004 at the age of 65 and above constitutes theworkspace of our descriptive study. The causes of death the phenomena embodied in ourwork is put forward by investigating the file records, ex notes, and death reports of them.Phenomena with forensic dimensions are especially studied carefully that forensic casedecleration and factors effecting autopsy are discussed in details.It is observed that, the mean value for the ages of 396 cases is 76,8±7,2, and thewomen/men ratio is 1,18. It is seen that, a thumping majority of the cases with determinedcauses are due to natural sicknesses such as cancer, cerebrovascular disease, chronicobstructive pulmonary disease, atherosclerotic heart disease. In four cases, it is observed thatforensic case diagnosis and forensic death examination was held. It is understood that fornone of these cases, forensic autopsy was done. Also it is observed that death reports were notfilled appropriately and the forensic case diagnosis might be skipped.This study, exposes the lack of knowledge of physicians about forensic case diagnosis,forensic case notice and the lack of comprehension about the importance of forensic autopsyfor revealing the causes and mechanisms of death in forensic cases. Also, the necessity ofgiving place to subjects of work flows that physicians follow for patients dying in hospitalsand the issue of filling the death reports appropriately, in the undergraduate and graduatemedicine education with applied programmes is paid attention once more.