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Clinical Course of 61 Serious Immersion Incidents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2012

Mark G. Harries
Mark G. Harries
Affiliation:
From the Department of Medicine, Guy's Hospital Medical School, London, UK.
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Extract

Retrospective studies of the mechanisms of drowning are difficult to make for a number of reasons. First, the severity of the immersion incident is hard to classify; therefore, conclusions drawn from the outcome of a number of incidents grouped together may be erroneous. Second, confusion results from traditional attempts to separate victims into those who immerse in salt water from those who immerse in fresh. This is an analysis of 61 individual cases of immersion published in the last 20 years, but not previously subjected to group analysis such as those published by Modell, Conn and Simcock.

Results

In 61 cases reviewed, males outnumbered females by almost 4 to 1 (48/13), 17 died and 44 survived (Table 1). When placed in age groups, those most at risk fell into the 0–5 years old group, comprising 43% of the total; but this group also contained the greatest proportion of survivors (Figure 1).

Type
Part II: Clinical Care Topics
Information
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine , Volume 1 , supplement S1: Disaster Resuscitology , 1985 , pp. 263 - 268
Copyright
Copyright © World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine 1985

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