Life-threatening danger assessments of penetrating injuries in Eastern Danish clinical forensic medicine

AbstractClinical forensic assessments of injuries ’ life-threatening danger may have an impact on the legal aftermath following a violent assault. The pursuit of evidence-based guidelines should ensure a user-independent and reproducible forensic practice. However, does it? The aim of this study was to evaluate the forensic life-threatening dange r assessments after a protocol implementation in 2016. The evaluation concerned usability and reproducibility of the protocol, and its influence on assessment severity. We analyzed the level of inter- and intra-rater agreement using 169 blinded, prior-protocol cases that were reassessed by two foren sic specialists. We compared assessment made the year before and after protocol implementation (n = 262), and the forensic specialists’ reassessments with the prior-protocol cases’ original assessments (n = 169). Whether to make an assessment, the levels of agreement varied between weak agreement (inter-rater,Κ = 0.43; assessor 1,Κ = 0.57) and strong agreement (assessor 2,Κ = 0.90). Regarding severity, the levels of agreement varied between strong agreement (inter-rater,Κ = 0.87; assessor 1:Κ = 0.90) and almost perfect agreement (assessor 2:Κ = 0.94). The assessments were statistically significant redistributed after the implementation (chi-square test:p <  0.0001). The proportion of cases assessed as having not been in life-threatening danger increased from 9 to 43%, and moderate severit...
Source: International Journal of Legal Medicine - Category: Medical Law Source Type: research