Bystander basic life support:  an important link in the chain of survival for children suffering  a drowning or near-drowning episode

Marchant, Jeanette; Cheng, Nicholas G; Lam, Lawrence T; Fahy, Fiona E; Soundappan, S V; Cass, Danny T; Browne, Gary J

doi:10.5694/j.1326-5377.2008.tb01725.x

Topics

Eight children suffered drowning or near-drowning in Sydney pools over an 11-day period in January 2007. Four received basic life support (BLS) within 5 minutes of immersion and survived with good functional neurological outcomes. The other four were not discovered for ≥ 5 minutes and all died. This cluster serves as a reminder that timely effective bystander BLS is crucial to survival and good clinical outcomes in near-drowning episodes.

During an 11-day period in January 2007, eight children presented to several emergency departments in the Sydney metropolitan region after a drowning or near-drowning event. While these incidents are known to be more common in summer, it is relatively uncommon to have such a cluster of cases occurring within a short period of time.

1 Department of Emergency Medicine, The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Sydney, NSW.
2 Centre for Trauma Care, Prevention, Education, and Research, The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Sydney, NSW.
3 University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW.

Correspondence: GaryB@chw.edu.au

Competing interests:

None identified.

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