A survey of inventions aimed at preventing drowning.

Drowning is a major global injury problem and is the second leading cause of unintentional injury death after road traffic injuries. As a result, many inventions to prevent drowning and to rescue drowning victims have been made over the years. Because information about many of these inventions that exists in patent databases is not found in the injury literature, many academic injury researchers and practitioners may be unaware of them. Therefore, a US patent database search was conducted to identify inventions aimed at preventing drowning, for the purpose of disseminating this information among injury prevention researchers, practitioners, and policy makers. The survey identified inventions that could be broadly classified into: (1) pool fences, gates, and latches, (2) detection and signalling devices, (3) floatation devices, (4) water rescue devices, (5) devices for emergencies involving watercraft, (6) devices for preventing drowning in pools, spas, bathtubs, and toilet bowls, (7) devices for preventing scuba diving related drowning, and (8) other miscellaneous inventions. These inventions range from simple devices such as pool fences and rescue nets to complex electronic systems that monitor swimmers in a pool and automatically recognize a swimmer in distress and sound an alarm. There are many inventions that deserve systematic evaluation of their effectiveness in preventing drowning. Especially, relatively low cost devices, affordable for deployment in lowand middle-income countries, should receive particular attention, as these countries endure almost 97% of global drowning deaths.