TY - JOUR
T1 - Pattern of presenting complaints recorded as near-drowning events in emergency departments
T2 - A national surveillance study from Pakistan
AU - He, Siran
AU - Lunnen, Jeffrey C.
AU - Zia, Nukhba
AU - Khan, Uzma Rahim
AU - Shamim, Khusro
AU - Hyder, Adnan A.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to acknowledge the data collectors at all the sites and Ms. Bobbi Nicotera for language edits of the paper. The Pak-NEDS study was supported through the “Johns Hopkins International Collaborative Trauma and Injury Research Training Program” [Grant No. D43TW007292] by Fogarty International Center of the United States National Institutes of Health. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not represent the views of Fogarty or NIH. This article has been published as part of BMC Emergency Medicine Volume 15 Supplement 2, 2015: Articles from the Pakistan National Emergency Departments Surveillance Study (Pak-NEDS). The full contents of the supplement are available online at http://www.biomedcentral.com/ bmcemergmed/supplements/15/S2. Publication of this supplement was funded by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 He et al.
PY - 2015/12/11
Y1 - 2015/12/11
N2 - Background: Drowning is a heavy burden on the health systems of many countries, including Pakistan. To date, no effective large-scale surveillance has been in place to estimate rates of drowning and near-drowning in Pakistan. The Pakistan National Emergency Department Surveillance (Pak-NEDS) study aimed to fill this gap. Methods: Patients who presented with a complaint of "near-drowning" were analyzed to explore patterns of true near-drowning (unintentional) and intentional injuries that led to the "near-drowning" complaint. Bivariate analysis was done to establish patterns among patients treated in emergency departments, including socio-demographic information, injury-related information, accompanying injuries, and emergency department resource utilization. Results: A total of 133 patients (0.2% of all injury patients) with "near-drowning" as presenting complaints were recorded by the Pak-NEDS system. True near-drowning (50.0%) and intentional injuries that led to "near-drowning" complaints (50.0%) differed in nature of injuries. The highest proportion of true near-drowning incidents occurred among patients aged between 25-44 years (47.5%), and among males (77.5%). True near-drowning patients usually had other accompanying complaints, such as lower limb injury (40.0%). Very few patients were transported by ambulance (5.0%), and triage was done for 15% of patients. Eleven (27.5%) true near-drowning patients received cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Conclusion: There was major under-reporting of drowning and near-drowning cases in the surveillance study. The etiology of near-drowning cases should be further studied. Patients who experienced non-fatal drownings were more commonly sent for medical care due to other accompanying conditions, rather than near-drowning event itself. There is also need for recognizing true near-drowning incidents. The results of this study provide information on data source selection, site location, emergency care standardization, and multi-sector collaboration for future drowning prevention studies.
AB - Background: Drowning is a heavy burden on the health systems of many countries, including Pakistan. To date, no effective large-scale surveillance has been in place to estimate rates of drowning and near-drowning in Pakistan. The Pakistan National Emergency Department Surveillance (Pak-NEDS) study aimed to fill this gap. Methods: Patients who presented with a complaint of "near-drowning" were analyzed to explore patterns of true near-drowning (unintentional) and intentional injuries that led to the "near-drowning" complaint. Bivariate analysis was done to establish patterns among patients treated in emergency departments, including socio-demographic information, injury-related information, accompanying injuries, and emergency department resource utilization. Results: A total of 133 patients (0.2% of all injury patients) with "near-drowning" as presenting complaints were recorded by the Pak-NEDS system. True near-drowning (50.0%) and intentional injuries that led to "near-drowning" complaints (50.0%) differed in nature of injuries. The highest proportion of true near-drowning incidents occurred among patients aged between 25-44 years (47.5%), and among males (77.5%). True near-drowning patients usually had other accompanying complaints, such as lower limb injury (40.0%). Very few patients were transported by ambulance (5.0%), and triage was done for 15% of patients. Eleven (27.5%) true near-drowning patients received cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Conclusion: There was major under-reporting of drowning and near-drowning cases in the surveillance study. The etiology of near-drowning cases should be further studied. Patients who experienced non-fatal drownings were more commonly sent for medical care due to other accompanying conditions, rather than near-drowning event itself. There is also need for recognizing true near-drowning incidents. The results of this study provide information on data source selection, site location, emergency care standardization, and multi-sector collaboration for future drowning prevention studies.
KW - Drowning
KW - Emergency care management
KW - Near-drowning
KW - Pakistan
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84977666400&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1186/1471-227X-15-S2-S4
DO - 10.1186/1471-227X-15-S2-S4
M3 - Article
C2 - 26691978
AN - SCOPUS:84977666400
SN - 1471-227X
VL - 15
JO - BMC Emergency Medicine
JF - BMC Emergency Medicine
IS - 2
M1 - S4
ER -