Characterization of personal injuries in the stomatognathic system valued by the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences South-western Regional between 2015-2020

Abstract

Introduction: Personal injury dictamen diagnoses and defines the damage produced to the body and health of a person, including the stomatognathic system, by injuries caused as the consequence of the actions of another person. Objective: Characterize the personal injuries that, as a result of violence, affected the stomatognathic system of 266 cases evaluated in the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences South-western Regional (Cali, Colombia) between the years 2015 and 2020. Materials and methods: Descriptive cross-sectional study that characterized the personal injuries that affected the stomatognathic system. Information about the personal injuries dictamen that was obtained from the SICLICO platform and associated with the nature of the injury, the consequences and the medical-legal disability was included. Results: A higher frequency of male aggressor (94.4%) and male victim (64.3%) was observed, focused in the age group between 21 and 30 years (32.6%). The most frequent contexts were interpersonal violence (76.3%) and intimate partner violence (19.9%). The main mechanism of aggression was blunt trauma (88.0%). The lesions reported in soft tissues (83.5%) affected periodontal tissues (48.9%) and lips (28.6%) due to edema (32.7%) and wound (22.9%), and in hard tissues (55.1%) affected the teeth (41.4%) due to complicated fractures in the cervical third (19.2%) and avulsion (18%). Definitive disability predominated (64.7%), with a 20-day report (28.6%) and functional sequelae (24.1%) being more frequent. Conclusions: Periodontal tissues and teeth were the most affected structures,causing considerable disabilities as well as functional and aesthetic sequelae that mainly affected men in a productive age