title: [The incidence of medical tangles related to death--the first report of a retrospective study on 27 years forensic autopsy work of medical tangles].
abstract: In order to investigate the characteristics of medical tangle autopsy, 318 autopsy cases of medical tangle from 1972-1998 were studied retrospectively. In the first report, the following conclusions were presented about the happening of medical tangles related to death: (1) The case number of medical tangle autopsy increased greatly from 23 in 1972-1983 to 295 in 1984-1998; (2) There was not much sexual difference in deaths; (3) There were two peaks in age distribution, 104 cases (37.21%) were below 10 years old, 161 cases (50.63%) were at the age of 20-49; (4) Most cases (195 cases, 61.32%) happened in middle size hospitals of cities and counties. In recent years, disputes in private-owned clinics were increasing; (5) The surgery (71 cases, 22.33%) and obstetrics (58 cases, 18.24%) were the most involved departments. The reasons resulting in medical tangles of 206 cases of non-malpractice and 99 cases of malpractice were discussed briefly.
authors.affiliation: Department of Forensic Pathology, Tongji Medical University, Wuhan 430030, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Y G
authors.initials: YG
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002423:Cause of Death; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D005554:Forensic Medicine; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008297:Male; D008318:Malpractice; D008875:Middle Aged; D012189:Retrospective Studies