The Magnitude of Medicolegal Postmortem That Turned Out to Be Natural Deaths at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital: A 3-Year Study

BACKGROUND: The periodic determination of the degree to which coroner’s postmortems done for medicolegal purpose turns out to be natural death is desirable because of its usefulness to health administrators in making policies that may ultimately help in focusing on the prevention/management of the causes of natural death at that particular point in time. OBJECTIVE: The objective of the study was to determine the causes of natural death by a retrospective analysis of coroner’s postmortem cases carried out on patients ages 19 years and above who died from natural causes. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A 3-year period, retrospective postmortem study was carried out at the Department of Anatomic Pathology, University of Benin Teaching Hospital on 530 medicolegal postmortem cases ages 19 and above who died from natural causes. RESULTS: Natural deaths were observed in 530 cases of medicolegal postmortems. Their age ranged from 19 years to 104 years with a mean age and standard deviation of 52.82 ± 16.71 years. Cardiovascular system diseases were the most common causes of natural deaths with hypertensive heart disease being the most common underlining cause. Infections and diseases of the respiratory, gastrointestinal system/hepatic, central nervous and endocrine systems were also noteworthy. CONCLUSIONS: Most causes of natural deaths were in the middle ages with the noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) accounting for a significant proportion. To reduce premature death from NCDs by 2030, the World Health Organization (WHO) is promoting its prevention and management. It is our desire that our health administrators would adopt this WHO model incorporating postmortem-based data for planning of medical services.