Contribution of Oral Records to the Forensic Identification in Yaounde

Introduction: During mass disasters, due to the quantity of bodies destroyed and their rapid decomposition, it is very often difficult to identify individuals. Today, this recognition can be made much easier by using the elements found in the ante-mortem oral file of the victims. This practice, which is increasingly common in the West, is very little used in our country where we have very few studies on the medico-legal value of this document. The purpose of the study was to determine the contribution of the oral file in the medico-legal identification in Yaoundé.

Methods: It was a descriptive and retrospective study conducted over a period of 8 months during 2021, in three hospitals in Yaoundé, namely the University Hospital of Yaoundé (CHUY), the Military Hospital of Yaoundé (HMY) and the Adventist Clinic of Yaoundé. Our research spanned a period of 4 years from January 2017 to December 2020. Our research spanned a period of 4 years from January 2017 to December 2020. Included in our study were any available and usable oral record found in the odontostomatology departments of our health facilities. Data collection was done using a pre-designed sheet. The data recording and analysis was carried out using Excel 2016 and SPSS 25.0 software.

Results: Out of 2761 files registered, 80.2% were archived and 1200 were exploitable. Photographs were missing from our files. The forensic identifiers found were: the patient’s personal information in at least 98.25% of the files, the odontogram in 48.75% of the files, the casts in 1.5% of the files, the retro-alveolar x-rays in 8.41% of the files and the panoramic x-rays in 2.08% of the files.

Conclusion: The oral file has a lot of personal, clinical and paraclinical information useful for the identification of victims.

Keywords: Forensic identification; Oral record; Yaounde