A Systematic Analysis of Medicolegal Radiological Investigations and Quantification of the Burden of Court Evidences on Radiology Department of a Tertiary Level Teaching Institute of North India Chauhan Narvir S1, Sood D2,*, Soni Pawan K3, Manjuswamy H R4, Sharma Kirti K4 1Associate Professor, Department of Radiodiagnosis, Dr. Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College-Tanda (Kangra), H.P 2Professor and Head, Department of Radiodiagnosis, Dr. Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College-Tanda (Kangra), H.P 3Associate Professor Department of Radiodiagnosis, Dr. Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College-Tanda (Kangra), H.P 4Junior Resident, Department of Radiodiagnosis, Dr. Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College-Tanda (Kangra), H.P *Corresponding author: Dinesh Sood, Professor and Head, Dr. Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College Tanda (Kangra), H.P, Email: drdineshtanda@gmail.com, Fax: 01892267115, Mobile: 9418476622
Online published on 8 February, 2019. Abstract Objective To systematically study the pattern of medico-legal cases (MLC) undergoing radiological investigations and to quantify the burden of MLC's. Materials and method In this retrospective study carried out in our institution between January 2009 and May 2017, all the MLC's details regarding nature of investigation, date, time, age, part examined, pattern of injury etc were manually collected and studied. Data was also collected for the time consumed by radiologists in carrying out MLC related activity. Results The total of 1629 Medico legal radiological investigations (MLRI) were done. Age range of MLCs was 1 to 90 years (mean 35 years, S.D 15 years) with males accounting for 71.5% and females for 28.5% cases. Radiographs comprised bulk of investigations (N=1301, 79.8%), followed by CT (N=272, 16.7%) and Ultrasound (MLU) (N=56, 3.4%). Fracture was the most common abnormality (N=251, 83.6%). Total time spent in delivering court evidences by radiologists in the study duration was 757 days. Conclusions Health institutions deal with substantial number of radiological MLC's with average of approximately MLRI 192 per year. Vast majority of the abnormal investigations are Radiographs and fracture is commonest abnormality detected. The average number of days devoted to MLC work by radiologists is 90 per year. Top Keywords Medico-legal evidence, Radiology evidence, court evidence. Top |