Medico-legal aspects of disabilities due to orthopedic injuries and compensations in Egypt.

Disability is a complex problem that results in detrimental effects on the victim. The number of disabled has increased considerably. The development constitutes a good reason for paying more specific attention to society's growing number of disabled. The physician's duties are not only to describe the anatomic and physiological defects present in the injured individual, but also to answer questions regarding the patient ability to perform specific economic or social function. This study aimed to clear up some of the problems or difficulties that may face the medico-legal physician or any personal that may be concerned with the process of evaluation. In the other words the aim of work is to design a new strategy for evaluating the degree of permanent infirmities and their compensation. The study investigates the pattern of disability in cases referred for medico-legal examination in department of Cairo and the chief's office of medico-legal administration in ministry of justice. The study included 200 cases of disabled. Male gender was more predominate than female gender (were male 78% - female 22%) and the working group (18-60) were the most frequent age group identified as victims of traumatic injuries. It was recommended the overall development plans of the country should have a positive role in prevention and decrease this problem.

Hanging deaths in Dammam, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

A retrospective study was carried out on 133 suicidal hanging cases autopsied at Forensic Medicine Center in Dammam, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (from 2003 to 2007). Of these cases, 115 (86.46%) were males and 18 females (13.54%), with an average male:female ratio of 6.38. There was an increasing trend of hanging among ages between 21 and 50 years (88.7%), and the fourth decade had the highest number of victims (about 36%) between all age groups. Local Saudi nationals comprised a small proportion of cases (21 persons, 15.8%), while the others were foreigners working in the Kingdom with an Indian precedence (63 persons, 47.4%), followed by other 11 different nationalities representing 36.8% of the cases. The peak of these suicidal acts was in June and the least was in February and December. Postmortem blood alcohol was found in 6.76% of cases, amphetamine in 3% (4 cases), and cannabinoids in 2.25% (3 cases). About 75% of the deceased persons were male laborers (100 cases), 11.27% were female housemaids (15 cases), and only 13 persons were unemployed (9.77%). Previous history of psychological illnesses was documented in 19 cases (14.28%) and stressful family problems in 6% of cases. There were previous suicidal attempts in only one case. Suicidal note was found in only seven cases. In conclusion, there was a decreasing trend of suicide by hanging in Dammam from 39 cases in 2003 to 17 cases in 2007, with a rate of 0.85/100,000 population in the last year. This was inconsistent with the overall increase in suicide rate in Dammam when compared to the previous decade.

Sexual dimorphism of the mandible in a modern Egyptian population.

Although human sex difference are now better known worldwide, there are few osteometric studies designed for sex assessment in Egyptians. The current study is the first to be conducted on this population to evaluate sex determination using osteometric mandibular measurements. By the use of spiral CT scan with three dimension reconstruction modality six mandibular measurements were assessed in 330 person (165 males and 165 females). These were subjected to statistical analysis. Many variables showed significant differences and included: bicondylar breadth, gonial angle and minimum ramus breadth. The study concluded that the overall predictive accuracy of this prediction model was 83.9% for whole studied persons. The correct predictive accuracy was 83.6% in males and 84.2% in females.