Firearms related deaths in the city of São Paulo, 2006

BACKGROUND. The state of São Paulo is located in the south-east of Brazil. His capital is the city of São Paulo, with an estimated population of 11 million people. The State of São Paulo has a rate of homicides of 5000 cases/year (Secretaria de Segurança Pública). The principl reason for this seems to be due to the high-density of poor population that lives in the peripheral area of the Brazilian metropolis and the high social disparity. Despite that a considerable number of publication deal with the characteristics of deaths by firearms, in the international scientific literature there is a lack of published works about the epidemiology and the profile of the victims of firearms in Brazil. OBJECTIVES. In this study all the autopsies performed at the Equip-Center of the Institute of Legal Medicine of the Scientific Police of São Paulo in the year 2006 were investigated retrospectively. The preliminary results about the month of August are reported. MATERIAL AND METHODS. The files of the computerized register were checked for firearm related deaths. The records included a detailed autopsy report with photographs and sketches of the single wounds and the auxiliary analyses such as toxicology and histology. The following parameters were analyzed: day of the week, gender, age and race, identification, number and sites of entrance and exit wound, shooting distance, direction of the internal bullet, internal injury, hospitalization before death, toxicological analyses, cause and manner of death. RESULTS. The results will be present in the poster. CONCLUSION. In the future we will analyze the autopsy reports regarding long periods. The results of this work could be useful to compare the firearm fatalities of cities of different countries in order to study their epidemiology in the South America.