[Adverse drug events and its forensic medical identification]

To investigate the basic principles and important rules of forensic identification of adverse drug events and to accumulate basic data and to provide references for forensic identification of similar cases.

Thirty-three cases of adverse drug events in our forensic identification files were retrospectively reviewed, analyzed, and summarized.

There were 27 live and 6 dead victims included in this study. Our study showed a gradually increasing numbers of adverse drug cases in forensic identification year by year with a slight female predominance (20/33 cases, 60.6%). Of the 33 victims, nearly two-thirds (21/33, 63.6%) were due to hospital errors including only one case of drug overdose (1/21, 4.8%), whereas the rest were not related to the hospital errors. Eight cases (8/33, 24.2%) were caused by illegal medical practitioners due to improper use of medication.

Investigators need to pay more attention to the characteristics and complexities of adverse drug events on a case by case basis encountered in increasing numbers of more and more such forensic identification.