Abstract

Abstract: Burn deaths are a Major public health problem in a developing country like India. About 1,60,000 to 2,00,000 burn deaths are reported in every year in India. A retrospective study was carried out on flame burn deaths from medico legal autopsies performed in the department of Forensic Medicine, Jorhat Medical College & Hospital, Jorhat, Assam, India.The objective of the study was to record and evaluate the causes and the magnitude of the fatal burn injuries retrospectively. An analysis of autopsy records revealed 196 (07.88%) cases of flame burn injuries among the total autopsies (2488) done in 5 years period (2011 – 2015). The results revealed that majority of burn incidents were accidental (70.41%) in nature followed by suicidal (23.47%) and homicidal (3.57%) deaths. Most of the deaths (49.46%) occurred between 21 – 30 years of age group with a preponderance of females (50.62%). Most of the victims (62.25%) were married, with female dominated. The majority of incident occurred in the kitchen (86.23%) followed by bedroom (7.14%), outside home (4.59%) and bathroom (2.04%). Kerosene stove burst (36.78%) was the major source of burn injuries followed by used of chulha for cooking (11.22%) and gas stove (5.11%). The percentage of burn injuries (TBSA) over 50% were observed in most of the cases (80.61%). The majority of deaths occurred within a week (61.74%) and most of the victims died (42.35%) from neurogenic shock.

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