Deaths of people in the mountainous territory of High Tatras

Summary

Authors Poprad, since the establishment of the Department of Forensic Medicine in Poprad in 1991 up to now. As mountainous environment is considered an area above the border of Tatranská magistrálna (a tourist footpath which leads across the High Tatras and partially Western Tatras). The file discusses the causes and mechanisms of death and their causal relationships, shows the nationality, age, gender or place of death of deceased people, amounts of deaths in the months of year and also in the days of week. Some results are shown in the graphs, the percentage results are described in a text. Valuable and complete results were reached only in cases with describe statistically a group of people who died in the mountainous environment of the High and Belianske Tatras for the last 25 years and who were dissected on the Department of Forensic Medicine in complete documentation (and also after autopsy, not every case of death was autopsied). At the same time, the authors describe the system of cooperation between the Department of Forensic medicine and Pathological Anatomy of Health care surveillance Poprad with Mountain rescue components and the Police force of Slovak Republic, operating in the territory of the High and Belianske Tatras. These components help us to gain information about the case, which are not usually known during the first inspection of dead body in a mortuary or at the moment of an autopsy (hikers and climbers are often alone in the mountains, so their accidents are without witnesses).

Keywords:
Tatras – deaths – causes– mechanisms – inspections