Autopsy audit of fatal suicidal burns: A retrospective study in South India Siddhartha Das , Vinod Ashok Chaudhari , Swaroop Kumar Sahu , Gerard Pradeep Devnath , Ankit Chandra

Abstract

Suicide is an important cause of death globally. Burns is the commonly employed method for Suicidal deaths. Burns is common in  Asian countries and India had the maximum cases of suicidal burns with the highest fatality rate. In the South India particularly Tamil  Nadu and Pondicherry had high rate of suicides. India has the highest hospital admission of cases due to suicidal burns. Autopsy  based study will help to collect important data on deaths due to suicidal burns. This study mainly focuses on various aspects of fatal  suicidal burns, reasons for committing suicide by burns and socio-demographic factors associated with it. It is a record based  retrospective study of fatal suicidal burns from January 2010 to December 2014 in a tertiary hospital in South India. We reviewed  3996 medicolegal autopsy case records and analyzed 459 fatal suicidal burns. Deidentified data were collected in anonymous data  proforma. A total of 459 (38%) fatal suicidal burns were studied out of 1205 fatal suicides. The majority of victims were females  (67.9%) as compared to males (32.1%). the mean age was 29.9 years (female – 27.9years, male – 34.2years). Common age group was  21-30 years (n=221, 48.14%). Family problems (n=185, 40.3%) and financial problems (n=32, 6.9%) were the main reason for  suicide among both sexes and most of the victims were married. The victims were from rural locality (n=364, 79.3%) and kerosene  (n=436, 94.98%) was the commonly used accelerant. The common time of the incident of burns was 12.00 to 06.00 pm (n=155,  33.7%). Three hundred ninety-eight cases (86.71%) had above 50% of burn TBSA with a median survival period of 184 hours. Most  of the victims were female, from the rural areas, family problems were the common reason for fatal suicidal burns. Median burn  TBSA was also higher. Data generated will be helpful for planning awareness and interventional programs to prevent suicidal burns.