@article{ref1,
title="Pattern of presenting complaints recorded as near-drowning events in emergency departments: a national surveillance study from Pakistan",
journal="BMC emergency medicine",
year="2015",
author="He, Siran and Lunnen, Jeffrey C. and Zia, Nukhba and Khan, Uzma Rahim and Shamim, Khusro and Hyder, Adnan Ali",
volume="15",
number="Suppl 2",
pages="S4-S4",
abstract="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. <br><br>METHODS: Patients who presented with a complaint of &quot;near-drowning&quot; were analyzed to explore patterns of true near-drowning (unintentional) and intentional injuries that led to the &quot;near-drowning&quot; 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. <br><br>RESULTS: A total of 133 patients (0.2% of all injury patients) with &quot;near-drowning&quot; as presenting complaints were recorded by the Pak-NEDS system. True near-drowning (50.0%) and intentional injuries that led to &quot;near-drowning&quot; 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. <br><br>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.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1471-227X",
doi="10.1186/1471-227X-15-S2-S4",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-227X-15-S2-S4"
}