Tehran University Medical Journal

Background: The death certificate is a document consisting of the deceased individual’s basic information and identification which is filled out, registered and signed by a doctor. the World health organization’s policies in their health planning, provide a suitable database with knowledge of the required elements for planners and other authorized information demanders. During a multi-year cooperation between various organizations, the first uniformed death certificate according the ICD-10 standard got published in the country in the year 2004.
Methods: This is a retrospective study which is about all of the deceased individuals in  Tajrish and Modares Tehran hospitals from april 2013 until the march 2014 who had death certificates. In this study the data related to 777 individual’s death certificates and medical files was analyzed. The sampling method was census and all the cases in the study’s time period who had death certificates were studied. The cases that had a gap in their required information were ruled out of the study. The data that included age, sex, place of death, issuing doctor’s expertise, general information and the cause of death was extracted from the archived files.

Background: Trauma is one of the main causes of maternal mortality and morbidity in societies, which annually causes millions of deaths worldwide and imposes a high financial burden on health facilities, the purpose of this study was to determine the frequency of physical trauma and its associated factors during pregnancy.
Methods: All data for this cross-sectional study were collected from medical records of pregnant women, who referred to the Mahdeeyeh Hospital in Tehran, Iran, as a result of trauma through 2015. Information related to the pregnant women with trauma was extracted from their medical records based on a researcher-made collection form. All patients who meet criteria for entering the study (based on entry and exit criteria from the study) were selected as samples. The significance level of the tests was considered as P<0/05, the Spearman correlation coefficient tests and Chi-square were used.
Results: A total of 68 people were enrolled on the basis of selected criteria, meanwhile, the mean age of subjects was 26 years and 100% had no history of abortion. In all cases the trauma was blunt and included 63% abdominal, 24% lower back, and 14% flank trauma. Abortion was reported in 3% and 8% of the cases with abdominal and lower back trauma, respectively. Also, according to the results of this study, in cases where the placental abruption (six cases) were lateral face pairs, in all of them physical trauma was also posed. It is necessary in the traumatic pregnant women referring with placental abruption symptoms and sign, due to the legal importance of doing a thorough examination and sonography, the type of placental abruption (lateral or central) is made sure and then documented in patients' files.
Conclusion: Physical trauma also is common in the pregnant women and the lateral aspect placental abruption can be one of the obvious evidence for physical trauma.

Background: Methotrexate is an anti-metabolite drug and one of the folic acid analog that it can play an important and functional role in the treatment of many malignancies and inflammatory diseases. However, the development of petechiae (maculopapular rash) is a very rare complication.
Case Presentation: The patient was a 77 years old woman, Aryan race, who was known a case of severe and progressive rheumatoid arthritis. She previously was treated by multiple drugs such as salicylates, gold, corticosteroids, because of unresponsiveness to these drugs, physician prescribed methotrexate once a day, but patient misunderstands and use three times per day for days. Patient with this history referred to a poisoning emergency. In a physical exam, she had oral and throat erythema and swelling of mucosa. In the funduscopy of eyes, bottom of the eyes was normal and conjunctival eyes were prurient she had multiple petechiae at the upper part of chest and base of neck and shoulders and arms with no swelling around petechiae. The lesion had no itching. She had no other sign besides laboratory analysis showed a high level of creatinine, leukopenia, decreased the level of platelets, patient with high suspicious of methotrexate poisoning underwent to granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) and folic acid treatment. After treatment all of her signs recovered and laboratory tests became normal.
Conclusion: At the time of taking methotrexate by the patient, even with appointment of a specialist physician, with any skin signs such as maculopapular rash without itching, we should consider poisoning with methotrexate, and think appropriately about it. This suggests that methotrexate can cause side effects even at low doses.

Background: Medical malpractice is one of the most important legal issues in medicine committed more or less by physicians. The medical staff has inadequate or deficient awareness of medical errors and their importance. Therefore, this study investigated the frequency of medical malpractices/errors resulting in death in files referred to the Iranian Legal Medicine Organization.
Methods: The study population in this descriptive cross-sectional research consisted of all doctors who had been sued in Tehran's Legal Medicine Organization (Forensic Committees of Tehran Province) from the first day of July 2018 to the end of December 2018. The study was carried out in and under supervision and support of the Legal Medicine Research Center. Data were collected using a checklist of the files from Tehran's Legal Medicine Organization.
Results: The results showed that most medical errors are of organizational types. Major medical failures occur in university-affiliated hospitals among the male technical staff aged 41-50 years with a work experience less than 6 years. Most complaints were recorded against general practitioners, general surgeons, and anesthesiologists, respectively. The smallest percentage of the complaints related to orthopedics, urologists, and ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialists.
Conclusion: The results of the study indicated that most of medical failures have of an organizational nature and occur in university hospitals among male technical officials who are in the fifth decade of life with a low work experience. So, paying attention to these issues can help the better selection of technical officials. The technical authorities of the hospitals must be careful about the responsibilities given to them. In order to reduce the failure of the technical authorities of the hospitals, doctors with a high standard of service should be appointed as technical officers. These doctors ought to possess legal knowledge and be familiar with the course of complaints filed in the judiciary.