Other
Sudden Death due to Swimming in Elderly Women
Petar Škavić
orcid.org/0000-0002-0956-0624
; University of Zagreb, School of Medicine, Department of Forensic Medicine and Criminology, Zagreb, Croatia
Din Duraković
; University of Rijeka, School of Medicine, Rijeka, Croatia
Abstract
The aim was to analyze the rate of sudden death in elderly Croatian women in comparison to elderly Croatian men,
who died suddenly due to swimming. In the period from 2002 to 2011 one elderly Croatian woman and fi ve elderly men
died suddenly during swimming. In the same time, the same number of elderly foreigners died due to swimming at the
Croatian Adriatic coast. One Croatian woman aged 66, who suffered of arterial hypertension with left ventricular hypertrophy
of 15 mm, diabetes mellitus and alcoholic liver cirrhosis, drowned in the sea during swimming. She was intoxicated
with alcohol and had alcohol level in urine of 3.03‰. One foreign woman, aged 82, who suffered coronary heart
and died disease with left ventricular scar after myocardial infarction, arterial hypertension with excessive left ventricular
hypertrophy of 22 mm and nephroangiosclerosis, suddenly lost consciousness during swimming. The death rate in
elderly Croatian women due to swimming reached 0.25, and the death rate in men is eight times higher: 1.97 (p=0.0701),
but the difference is not signifi cant probably because of a small observational number.
Keywords
elderly women; recreational swimming; sudden death
Hrčak ID:
147716
URI
Publication date:
30.3.2015.
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