An elderly man has tragically died at Santa Barbara de Sucre Hospital after he decompensated while trying to access his medical files, ERBOL network reporter Ivan Ramos reported.
“The patient arrived at the hospital to review documents, but before going to the cashier, he sat on a registration desk bench and became decompensated,” said hospital director Daniel Gumiel.
Doctors claimed to have provided prompt care to the patient, and he was rushed to the emergency room within minutes.
He mentioned that the elderly may experience cardiopulmonary arrest. This is a chronically ill patient with a pacemaker and valvular disease due to an enlarged heart.
Doctors tried for half an hour to revive the man, but he was unresponsive.
Gumier noted that the man may have needed regular checkups for his heart condition, or had simply died suddenly from cardiac arrest.
The director of the hospital sighed: “This kind of cardiopulmonary arrest may sometimes happen at home, in traffic, at work, or while walking, and this time, it happened here.”
He stressed that the old man’s death was not due to waiting, anger or bad timing, but decompensation after he arrived at the medical center.
“It is likely that, as usual, the patient fails to recognize the signs and symptoms of a serious pathology, mistaking it for a milder disease. Often there is epigastric pain resembling gastritis. A heart attack confuses the patient”, he added.