Drowning still remains one of the most difficult diagnoses in forensic pathology because macroscopic and microscopic autopsy findings are unspecific. An ideal diagnostic marker for drowning still needs to be developed, but some authors have recently studied SP-A as a marker of asphyxiation and drowning. The aim of this study is to compare the histopathological features and the SP-A immunohistoc...

BACKGROUND While standard data on drowning reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) fails to provide a reliable picture of the burden of drowning in Finland, they suggest that the rates are much higher than those of other industrialized countries. AIM To determine the true burden of drowning in Finland and factors related to its high rates. DESIGN Descriptive, retrospective, populati...

BACKGROUND Drowning deaths are devastating and preventable. Public perception does not regard hot weather as a common scenario for drowning deaths. The objective of our study was to test the association between hot weather and drowning risk. MATERIALS AND METHODS We conducted a retrospective case-crossover analysis of all unintentional drowning deaths in Ontario, Canada from 1999 to 2009. Dem...

Drowning kills 372 000 people yearly worldwide and is a serious public health issue in the Philippines. This study aims to determine if the drowning death rates in the Philippine Health Statistics (PHS) reports from 1980 to 2011 were underestimated. A retrospective descriptive study was conducted to describe the trend of deaths caused by drowning in the Philippines from official and unofficial ...

BACKGROUND Alcohol is a well-known risk factor in unintentional drownings. Whereas psychotropic drugs, like alcohol, may cause psychomotor impairment and affect cognition, no detailed studies have focused on their association with drowning. Finland provides extensive post-mortem toxicological data for studies on drowning because of its high medico-legal autopsy rates. METHODS Drowning cases, ...

BACKGROUND Drowning among children of migrant workers is a major, though neglected public health issue in China. METHODS A randomised controlled trial was used to examine the potential impact of viewing a preventive health poster with/without geo-located drowning events on perceptions of drowning risk among Chinese migrant children. A total of 752 children from three schools in Jiangbei distr...

Drowning and near-drowning are common causes of accidental death worldwide and respiratory complications such as non-cardiogenic pulmonary oedema, acute respiratory distress syndrome and pneumonia are often seen. In other settings lung ultrasound can accurately diagnose these conditions; hence lung ultrasound may have a potential role in the evaluation of drowning or near-drowning victims. In t...

OBJECTIVES The aim was to determine in New Zealand: (1) to what degree the International Classification of Diseases Supplementary Classification (ICD) external cause (E) codes for drowning identify all deaths involving drowning; (2) how the other drowning deaths are distributed across E codes; and (3) whether the proportion of drownings not identified by traditional ICD E codes has changed over...

Objectives—The aim was to determine in New Zealand: (1) to what degree the International Classification of Diseases Supplementary Classification (ICD) external cause (E) codes for drowning identify all deaths involving drowning; (2) how the other drowning deaths are distributed across E codes; and (3) whether the proportion of drownings not identified by traditional ICD E codes has changed over...