Ahoy!
I've been told that this afternoon Oprah is going to do a story about a child who died from "dry drowning." I'm going to try to get to a TV to watch the story, and if so, I'll comment on the program later. Right now, I wanted to post some links where you can read more information about dry and secondary drowning.
The child that will be discussed on the Oprah show died from "secondary drowning" because he had water in his lungs. "Dry" drowning is a different event. Both events are discussed in the posts listed below. I will find some additional references on the subject and post them on our Water Safety page at http://www.btaquatics.org/.
1. Question and answer article with answers from Neil Schachter, MD, medical director of respiratory care at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City
http://children.webmd.com/news/20080605/sc-dry-drowning-death-draws-attention
http://www.wciv.com/news/stories/0608/525754.html
2. Articles about the child discussed on the Oprah show
http://www.wciv.com/news/stories/0608/525754.html
http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_Goose_Creek_Boy_Dies_from_Secondary_Drowning_18532.html
3. Snopes.com post on this subject
http://www.snopes.com/medical/disease/drydrowning.asp
4. LA Times article on this subject
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/16/health/he-danger16
5. Wikipedia article on Dry Drowning (I've copied one paragraph from this article below.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_drowning
Misnomer in Media
Dry drowning was cast into the media spotlight in June of 2008 after the tragic death of a 10 year old boy in South Carolina several hours after swimming [1]. In this case, "dry drowning" may have been a misnomer, however. The incident described by the boy's mother did relate an episode of forceful apnea that would have indicated laryngospasm and therefore dry drowning. What is clear is that this boy's death involved the delayed effects of an injury suffered by his lungs while in the swimming pool. Typically, dry drowning involves laryngospasm and immediate hypoxia and death, not delayed pulmonary edema. Theoretically, it is possible that the negative inspiratory forces of the diaphragm against the closed upper airway in laryngospasm could cause enough barotrauma to trigger alveolar injury and pulmonary edema. In this case of barotrauma, the dry drowning survivor could suffer laryngospasm too brief to cause death, but long enough to cause delayed pulmonary edema and death several hours later. This phenomena would be similar to the delayed pulmonary edema of a "wet drowning" victim, however, and therefore fairly impossible to distinguish. It is unclear as to why the media labeled the 10 year old's death a case of "dry drowning" rather than a "secondary drowning" or "delayed submersion injury."
I recommend that everyone read this information and be aware of the signs and symptoms of post-immersion syndrome, dry-, and secondary drowning.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Be safe.
-jn
We swim for good times: fast times when we compete and fun times every time we get in the pool together. You can too! Face-Up First Swimming is also the home of the popular online course, Water Safety Education for Parents and Caregivers. My name is Jeanie Neal and I developed Face-Up First swimming and put together the online course.