Journal of Emergency Practice and Trauma

The importance of victim’s clothes in gunshot wounds

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Fares Najari 1
Hadi Jafari 1
Ali Mohammad Alimohammadi 2
Dorsa Najari 3

1 Forensic Medicine Department, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

2 Tehran Legal Medicine Organization, Tehran, Iran

3 School of Medicine, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

https://doi.org/10.34172/jept.2020.13
Abstract
Objective: Determination of victim’s clothes in gunshot wounds is important due to the necessity of immediate workup in the emergency room as well as the legal aspects of cases. The aim of this study is to evaluate the importance of victim’s clothes in gunshot wounds referred to autopsy hall of legal medicine bureau of Tehran, Iran from 2014 to 2017.
Methods: In this analytical comparative study, 202 consecutive cadavers of gunshot victims, referred to Tehran Legal Medical Hall from 2014 to 2017, were enrolled and the effect of shotgun and gunshot wound were determined and compared. Data were collected using a researcher-made questionnaire. The significance level of the tests was considered as P < 0.05. Spearman correlation coefficient and chi-square tests were used accordingly. The data were analyzed using SPSS software version 22.
Results: In this study, all women were killed by gunshot. Also, all of the 26 people who were killed by shotgun were men. The mean of age only in males was 39-48 years for shotgun, and 29-38 years in both genders for gunshot. Evaluation of their clothes in the emergency room and autopsy hall was helpful in 70% of cases in order to determine shot distance and type of gun (P = 0.0001). Conversely, we did not observe a significant difference between sex (P = 0.082) and the pattern of death (P = 0.211).
Conclusion: Based on the obtained results, it seems that some characteristics of victim’s clothes may be useful to differentiate shotgun and gunshot.

Keywords

Shotgun
Gunshot
Victims
Wounds
Gunshot firearms
Subjects
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Journal of Emergency Practice and Trauma
Volume 6, Issue 2
July 2020
Pages 73-76

  • Receive Date 22 March 2020
  • Revise Date 15 April 2020
  • Accept Date 19 April 2020

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