Causes of Death in Children Aged Under Five Years in Tehran Province, Iran: A Forensic Epidemiological Study of Autopsy Data Publisher



Behnoush B¹ ; Okazi A¹ ; Bahrami M² ; Behnoush AH³ ; Bazmi E⁴ Show Affiliations
Source: Iranian Journal of Pediatrics Published:2022

Abstract

Background: Mortality among children under 5 years is an important health indicator. Therefore, determining the most common causes and manners of death according to the postmortem data is necessary for designing intervention programs to reduce mor-tality. Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the causes and manners of death in children aged under 5 years old in Tehran, Iran using autopsy findings. Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted on the data of all deaths among children aged under 5 years who were referred to the Legal Medicine Organization of Tehran, Iran, during January 2009-December 2019. The data were collected using the checklists of demographic characteristics, autopsy, toxicological findings, pathological findings, hospital records, and judicial documents, which were then analyzed. Results: Among 1750 children aged under 5 years old included in this study, 898 (51.3%) cases were male, and 997 (56.9%) were hos-pitalized. Most of the mortality cases occurred about two months after birth. The most common causes of death were found as congenital cardiovascular anomalies (14.7%), pneumonia (11.7%), and preterm labor (11%). Moreover, natural death (77.7%), accidental death (17.7%), homicide (2.7%), and unknown death (2%) were the major manners of death in these children. Conclusions: Postmortem examination to determine the causes of unnatural death could help clinicians and policymakers to pro-pose a suitable intervention for reducing the mortality rate in children under 5 years. © 2022, Author(s).