THE IMPACT OF LOCKDOWN MEASURES TAKEN TO COMBAT THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON THE PATTERN OF CLINICAL FORENSIC MEDICINE CASES

M. ?. Yıldırım, B. P. Koç, U. Kayhan

Abstract: Introduction. Epidemiological studies comparing lockdown periods with other times take their place in the literature under many titles. However, there is no epidemiological study conducted in forensic medicine clinics and evaluating the entire spectrum of forensic cases, as far as we can reach. In this study, it is aimed to reveal the effects of lockdown measures during COVID-19 pandemic on the clinical forensic medicine case pattern by retrospectively evaluating the cases of a tertiary center forensic medicine clinic.
Materials and Methods. 2686 cases that were admitted to our center in the 19-month period following the announcement of the pandemic in our country and reported as forensic cases were investigated retrospectively and evaluated by dividing them into three groups as lockdown, post-lockdown, and other days according to the date of the event.
Results. It was seen that 1923 (71.6%) of the cases were male and 763 (28.4%) were female and have a median age of 29 (IQR: 27). It was determined that suicide attempts were most common the day after lockdown, suicide and self-harm cases were more frequent during the lockdown process compared to other days of the pandemic, and traffic accident injuries and workplace accidents were more frequent during the lockdown period.
Conclusion. Considering that there are many studies with very different results according to the center where the study was conducted, there is a need for multicenter studies investigating the lockdown effect to reach larger case numbers and obtain stronger results.
Keywords: COVID-19, pandemic, lockdown, clinical forensic medicine.