What Parents Need to Know About Dry Drowning

Dr. Christian Wright is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and specializes in pediatric emergency medicine at the University of Maryland Children’s Hospital. Below he answers everything parents need to know about “dry drowning.” What is dry drowning? “Dry drowning” is actually an outdated term. These days, research and health organizations prefer to simply define drowning as a process where being submerged or immersed in liquid leads to respiratory impairment—that is, difficulty breathing. Drowning can be fatal or nonfatal. Sometimes a person can develop difficulty breathing after they have left the water, sometimes even hours later, and sadly there have been cases when children have died of drowning hours after being exposed to water. In the media, a distinction is often made between “dry drowning” and “secondary drowning.” Again, these are outdated terms, but they do attempt to explain two physiological processes that occur in drowning. When water is inhaled, it causes a spasm of the airways which causes them to close, which makes it difficult to breathe. This usually happens right after the water has been inhaled, so the person could still be in the water or they could have just left it. In the past, it was thought that in this way a person could drown without water entering the lungs, so this was called “dry drowning.” In reality, though, water enters the lungs in almost every drowning ...
Source: Life in a Medical Center - Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Tags: Children's Health Health Tips Kids dry drowning emergency medicine kids water safety Source Type: blogs