Therapeutic abortion in Iran: an epidemiologic study of legal abortion in 2 years.

OBJECTIVES: Unsafe abortion is one of the most important causes of death and disability among mothers in countries where abortion is illegal. These conditions have changed since then. The present study has investigated the cases who were referred to the legal medicine organization to receive abortion permission. This country level secondary patient data analysis, investigated all the cases who were referred to the legal medicine centers of Iran for abortion permission during 2015 to 2017. RESULTS: From 21,477 applicants, 15,617 (72.71%) received permission including 14,367 (91.99%) for fetal abnormalities and 1250 (8.01%) for maternal diseases. The most common fetal abnormalities/disorders were nervous system malformations (26.4%), chromosomal abnormalities (18.4%) and of maternal diseases were circulatory system diseases (43.9%), neoplasms (13.4%) and genitourinary system diseases (9.9%). The most common reasons for not permission were lack of supplementary documents to prove (38.8%), not competency with the criteria (33.9%), and gestational age of more than 19 weeks (25.8%).

Claims about medical malpractices resulting in neonatal and maternal impairment in Iran.

BACKGROUND: Today even low incidence of complications for mothers or neonates during pregnancy, delivery or postpartum is unacceptable to the public and can result in claims because of greater expectation from patients and an increase in media coverage. The present study was conducted to investigate the reasons for medical malpractice claims on maternal and neonatal impairment, which are achieved in Iranian Legal Medicine Organization councils. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The present cross-sectional and retrospective study used convenience sampling to collect data of total claims from 31 provinces archived in the supreme council of the ILMO in 2 years. In this article, the medical malpractice claims on maternal and neonatal impairment during pregnancy, labour, delivery and early postpartum were reported. The data were collected through a validated researcher-made checklist and were analyzed in SPSS 16. RESULTS: Among total of 299 cases of impairment, cerebral palsy (33.34%), Erb's palsy due to shoulder dystocia (24.24%) and Down Syndrome (24.24%) were the main confirmed causes of malpractice for neonatal impairment and Retained Surgical Mass (20.5%), Salpingectomy and/or Oophorectomy Related to EP (17.2%), Hysterectomy (17.2%) and Episiotomy Related complication (17.2%) were the main confirmed causes of malpractice for maternal impairment. CONCLUSION: Considering this fact that medical malpractice was confirmed in a large proportion of some preventable and important complications, therefore, results of this study can be used for developing educational programs for related healthcare providers to prevent those complications.