The cause of death of 22-year-old Matteo Ruzic, who died in the street last week in the central Croatian town of Zapresic, was asthmatic bronchitis and an undiagnosed heart defect, Health Ministry officials said on Monday at a press conference.
The autopsy report was presented by the Health Minister Milan Kujundzic, professor Vedrana Petrovecki from the Institute for Forensics and Criminology at the Zagreb Faculty of Medicine, and Maja Grba-Bujevic, head of the Croatian Institute of Emergency Medicine.
“We confirmed that Matteo died of asthmatic bronchitis and an undiagnosed heart condition, a defect in blood vessels to be exact, which resulted in sudden death,”Petrovecki said, adding that this was only a preliminary report.
She said that the heart defect was a pre-existing condition which does not have to have visible symptoms in young people.
“The presence of a doctor could not have changed what had happened,” she said.
The emergency medical service system did not fail in this case, nor was there any mistake in the procedure, Kujundzic said.
Ruzic had died last Sunday afternoon after fainting in the street in Zapresic. The ambulance arrived at the scene quickly, but without a doctor in the response team. Another response team, with the doctor, arrived a little under half and hour later, but by then it was too late. His death caused strong reactions from the media and public, with calls for Health Minister’s resignation.
“As a man of morals, I’ve been saying from the beginning that I would resign if it was established that the system had failed. The system did not fail. Unfortunately, if the deceased had been anywhere else in the world, no one would have been able to help him,” he said.
In Europe, there are many emergency systems with paramedics or technicians and this is where we must look for solutions, Grba-Bujovic said.
“We need people who are competent enough to provide emergency treatment to the patient. I cannot decide where they would receive training. But it’s high time we find a consensus. There is a shortage of doctors which will only get worse. There is a lot of room to improve the system,” she said.
“The emergency service in Croatia is on an enviable level. The resuscitation success in Croatia is around 14 percent, the same as most other EU countries. It can be improved, and we’re working on it. We are working on a system with paramedics,” Kujundzic said.
He said that the number of emergency medical teams would be increased through additional training for nurses so that they could deal with emergency situations and the introduction of paramedics.
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