Forensic Science International 93 (1998) 89–98 Unexplained and explained natural deaths among persons above 1 year of age in a series of medico- legal autopsies a, 1 ,a b * Ivar Nordrum , Tor J. Eide , Leif Jørgensen a Department of Pathology, University Hospital of Tromsø, 9038 Tromsø, Norway b Section of Forensic Medicine, Department of Morphology, Institute of Medical Biology, University of Tromsø, 9037 Tromsø, Norway Received 17 December 1997; received in revised form 26 January 1998; accepted 2 February 1998 Abstract The aim of this study was to describe unexplained and explained natural deaths among deceased above 1 year of age in a series of medico-legal autopsies collected over a 20-year period (1972–1992). Unexplained natural deaths can be defined as those deaths where no cause-of-death is revealed after post-mortem and without circumstances indicating violent death. The death was considered to be natural in 491 cases above 1 year of age among a total of 2004 medico-legal autopsies. In 428 of these cases an explanation as to the cause-of-death was reached. The three most frequently encountered causes-of-death were complications to coronary atherosclerosis (62.6%), diseases of the lung (12.4%) and diseases in the central nervous system (9.8%). Among 59 cases with unexplained natural death, 50 had various chronic diseases or fatty liver. In 43 of these cases the deceased had epilepsy or chronic alcoholism. In nine cases (1.8% of the natural deaths) no explanation to the cause-of-death could be given.  1998 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Natural death; Unexplained death; Medico-legal autopsy; Forensic pathology 1. Introduction Natural deaths are the most frequent manner-of-death in medico-legal autopsy * Corresponding author. Tel.: 147 77627200; fax: 147 77627204; e-mail: patin@rito.no 1 Present address: Department of Pathology, The National Hospital, 0027 Oslo, Norway. 0379-0738 / 98 / $19.00  1998 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. PII S0379-0738(98)00033-4