earticle

영어

For the effective identification of drug-toxicants as the cause of death in forensic toxicology, it is important to analyze and establish the recent patterns of detected drugs in postmortem specimens and share their informations. So, we evaluated the results of the identification and their patterns of drug-toxicants detected in autopsy cases which occurred in Metropolitan areas including Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi province, and conducted by main office of National Forensic Service (NFS) during last three years (2010~2012). The results of requested cases in last three year, indicate that the frequencies of requests are 43.7 %, 43 % and 27 % from Gyeonggi, Seoul, and Incheon province, respectively. Men are more common than women, and positive results are less than negative results. As the detection rates of drug-toxicants, drugs, cyanide and pesticides are 93.27 %, 3.95 %, and 2.51 %, respectively. Most frequently detected drugs are chlorpheniramine (antihistamine), lidocaine(local anesthetics and antiarrhythmics) and atropine (parasympatholytics), which are supposed to be used for the emergent therapeutic purpose such as cardiac resuscitation in hospitals. Among pesticides, paraquat, methomyl, glyphosate, methidathion are highly detected in the order of frequency. These statistical analyses of drug-toxicants in postmortem specimens will be very helpful for prediction of causes of deaths in postmortem specimens.