Unexplained and explained natural deaths among persons above 1 year of age in a series of medico-legal autopsies.

The aim of this study was to describe unexplained and explained natural deaths among decreased above 1 year of age in a series of medico-legal autopsies collected over a 20-year period (1972-1992). Unexplained natural deaths can be defined as those deaths where no cause-of-death is revealed after post-mortem and without circumstances indicating violent death. The death was considered to be natural in 491 cases above 1 year of age among a total of 2004 medico-legal autopsies. In 428 of these cases an explanation as to the cause-of-death was reached. The three most frequently encountered causes-of-death were complications to coronary atherosclerosis (62.6%), diseases of the lung (12.4%) and diseases in the central nervous system (9.8%). Among 59 cases with unexplained natural death, 50 had various chronic diseases or fatty liver. In 43 of these cases the deceased had epilepsy or chronic alcoholism. In nine cases (1.8% of the natural deaths) no explanation to the cause-of-death could be given.