[Deaths of people in the mountainous territory of High Tatras]. / Úmrtia vo vysokohorskom teréne na území Vysokých Tatier.

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).

Suicidal nitrogen inhalation by use of scuba full-face diving mask.

A 29-year-old man was found dead lying on the bed in a hotel room in a famous Slovak mountain resort. He had a full-face diving mask on his face, connected through a diving breath regulator to a valve of an industrial (nondiving) high-pressure tank containing pure 100% nitrogen. The breath regulator (open-circuit type) used allowed inhalation of nitrogen without addition of open air, and the full-face diving mask assured aspiration of the gas even during the time of unconsciousness. At autopsy, we found the typical signs of suffocation. Toxicological analysis revealed 94.7% content of nitrogen in alveolar air. Following the completion of the police investigation, the manner of death was classified as a suicide. Within the medico-legal literature, there has been only one similar case of suicidal nitrogen inhalation described.