Somewhere during my EMS training I remember reading or perhaps learning in a CE lecture that victims of cold water drowning tended to respond better to resuscitation attempts than "traditional" cardiac arrest patients (the saying "you're not dead until you're warm and dead" springs to mind), but I can't seem to find any statistics to back this up. Anyone seen a published study about this? Anyone have personal experience responding to a drowning call?
Part of why I'm asking is simply curiosity and a desire to understand the phenomenon better but I guess I should admit that I'm personally involved with this topic. Last January I lost a close friend whom I've known since I was 15 in a freak drowning accident (she fell through an uncovered manhole that was apparently hidden by a layer of snow) and I've had this horrible suspicion plaguing me that maybe she would have survived if it had happened in a country with a better medical system or more advanced protocols (this occurred in Estonia).
I know this is the worst kind of "Monday morning quarterbacking" and probably highly unfair to the EMS providers who responded; I wasn't there to see what actually happened/don't know what kind of trauma and other complications were present and my feeling probably indicates that I'm still somewhere between denial and anger in the stages of grief and am therefore being somewhat (very?) irrational about this. I also realize that news reporting isn't perfectly accurate, but it really bothers me that she was reported to have been pronounced dead in the ambulance and I keep wondering, did that mean they just stopped CPR and gave up on her? It doesn't help that I stumbled across an Estonian EMS forum and people were commenting that the rescue seemed very poorly done. I have no way of knowing how much/how little they knew of the situation and on what basis they made that judgement, but it hasn't helped the nagging feeling that someone F*ed up.
Here's the original news article if anyone's interested:
http://www.parnupostimees.ee/378219/parnus-hukkus-kaevu-kukkunud-noor-naine/
It's in Estonian but there are pictures of the rescue in progress. I don't recommend the automatic translation feature offered by Google Chrome. You could get the gist of it, I suppose, but you'll have to overlook the ridiculous mistranslations such as "cannabis users were unable to save her life." <---WTF, Google?
*sigh* I don't know how I've derailed my post so much already... What do you know about cold water drownings? Have you ever responded to one? Ever had a save from this situation? How long would you continue CPR? Have you seen any evidence in the literature or from personal experience that the ridiculous "Grey's Anatomy" save after hours and hours of asystole EVER actually happens?
Part of why I'm asking is simply curiosity and a desire to understand the phenomenon better but I guess I should admit that I'm personally involved with this topic. Last January I lost a close friend whom I've known since I was 15 in a freak drowning accident (she fell through an uncovered manhole that was apparently hidden by a layer of snow) and I've had this horrible suspicion plaguing me that maybe she would have survived if it had happened in a country with a better medical system or more advanced protocols (this occurred in Estonia).
I know this is the worst kind of "Monday morning quarterbacking" and probably highly unfair to the EMS providers who responded; I wasn't there to see what actually happened/don't know what kind of trauma and other complications were present and my feeling probably indicates that I'm still somewhere between denial and anger in the stages of grief and am therefore being somewhat (very?) irrational about this. I also realize that news reporting isn't perfectly accurate, but it really bothers me that she was reported to have been pronounced dead in the ambulance and I keep wondering, did that mean they just stopped CPR and gave up on her? It doesn't help that I stumbled across an Estonian EMS forum and people were commenting that the rescue seemed very poorly done. I have no way of knowing how much/how little they knew of the situation and on what basis they made that judgement, but it hasn't helped the nagging feeling that someone F*ed up.
Here's the original news article if anyone's interested:
http://www.parnupostimees.ee/378219/parnus-hukkus-kaevu-kukkunud-noor-naine/
It's in Estonian but there are pictures of the rescue in progress. I don't recommend the automatic translation feature offered by Google Chrome. You could get the gist of it, I suppose, but you'll have to overlook the ridiculous mistranslations such as "cannabis users were unable to save her life." <---WTF, Google?
*sigh* I don't know how I've derailed my post so much already... What do you know about cold water drownings? Have you ever responded to one? Ever had a save from this situation? How long would you continue CPR? Have you seen any evidence in the literature or from personal experience that the ridiculous "Grey's Anatomy" save after hours and hours of asystole EVER actually happens?
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