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The Role of Autopsy and Post-Mortem Investigations in Falling Traumas in the Hospital Environment

Authors :
Matteo Antonio Sacco
Fabrizio Cordasco
Ludovico Abenavoli
Angelo Lavano
Giovanni Gallotta
Eugenio Garofalo
Andrea Bruni
Carmen Scalise
Saverio Gualtieri
Alessandro Pasquale Tarallo
Valerio Riccardo Aquila
Pietrantonio Ricci
Isabella Aquila
Source :
Diagnostics; Volume 12; Issue 12; Pages: 3168
Publication Year :
2022
Publisher :
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2022.

Abstract

Falls in a hospital setting are a global public health problem. Despite the production of sensors and various preventive tools to reduce the risk, falls remain a dangerous event with a significant impact on the morbidity and mortality of patients. Despite numerous prevention strategies, falling in the hospital are not always investigated and the autopsy is not always performed in these cases, so it is often not known whether the death is related to the fall or to other causes, inevitably affecting the assessment of any profiles of medical liability for health personnel or for the hospital in the accident. We describe three cases of falls that occurred in different hospitals, in which the autopsy allowed to diagnose with certainty the extent of the trauma and to reconstruct its dynamics. Along with the circumstantial and documentary analyses, deficiencies both in the trauma diagnostics and in the application of the safety measures on the patients were showed. Together with the description of our cases, we propose the post-mortem investigations of these events, both for judicial and risk management purposes.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
20754418
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
Diagnostics; Volume 12; Issue 12; Pages: 3168
Accession number :
edsair.doi.dedup.....2b0863a8172de478c32e19826bf753a3
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics12123168