Slovak patients most commonly die of heart failure, lung inflammation, respiratory failure and cerebral infarction, TASR learnt from the National Health Information National Centre (NCZI) on Tuesday. The most frequent causes of hospitalisation in 2017 included diseases of the circulatory system as well as digestive system diseases and cancer. The number of patients placed in hospitals has been decreasing over the long term. "We've been observing a downward trend of the average treatment time in hospitals for a long time. Even though the average treatment time went down from 6.6 to 6.5 days year-on-year, it dropped by 1.2 days over the past ten years," said NCZI spokesman Boris Chmel.
Gavin Shoebridge, Photo: TASR
