Journal of North Khorasan

Abstract Background & objective: Due to the high prevalence of drug use in Iran and its socio- familial complications and mortality, we aimed to compare the incidence of death due to substance abuse in North Khorasan in 2008-2013. Material & Methods: In this Descriptive - analytic study, we compared all of death caused by substance abuse. Of all deaths reported to the forensic medicine of North Khorasan between 5 years. Then Data were recorded on a data entry form.The data where gathered from the original forensic medicine checklist .Data were analyzed by SPSS software and presented with descriptive statistics Result: In all case of death due to substance abuse, 88.6 % were male. The mean age of the group was 34.82± 14.34. In terms of education most of them were illiterate and unemployed. 75% of group had smoking history. Opium abuse by 43.7% had maximum involvement in death. In the end 19.4% of deaths occurred in 1387, 22.2% in 1388, 18.8% in 1389, 14.2% in 1390 and 25.4% in 1391. Conclusion : Result showed that death caused by substance abuse are more prevalent in young men, unemployed and illiterate persons .There was no significant difference of death due to substance abuse between years.