Sir
I thank Tipton, Golden, and Morgan for their feedback on my recent commentary where I suggested that two recent studies provided evidence that their proposed search and rescue guidelines may err on the side of pessimism when determining when a rescue attempt should move on to a body recovery phase.
1
Tipton and Golden's original review
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resulted in a number of letters documenting serious methodological flaws and as a result has not unfortunately provided the clear search and rescue guidance that was intended.3
, 4
Although I agree with Tipton, Golden, and Morgan that there is a difference between submersion and immersion, the time at which this occurs is almost always unknown and is not a factor that can be used to distinguish potential survival times; certainly the papers quoted in their original study generally do not distinguish between submersion and immersion.2
A useful way forward would be to establish an international database with an appropriate dataset, in order to record all cases of people recovered from water, rather than relying on a dataset marred by publication bias where little is written about those who have died.
Conflicts of interest statement
Resuscitation Guidelines Lead, Joint Royal Colleges Ambulance Liaison Committee, UK.
Chair, Medical & Survival Sub-Committee, RNLI.
Divisional Medical Director, South Central Ambulance Service.
Immediate past Co-Chair, Advanced Life Support Working Group, ILCOR.
References
- Drowning: more hope for patients, less hope for guidelines.Resuscitation. 2012; 83: 1051-1052
- A proposed decision-making guide for the search, rescue and resuscitation of submersion (head under) victims based on expert opinion.Resuscitation. 2011; 82: 819-824
- Rescue and resuscitation or body retrieval – the dilemmas of search and rescue efforts in drowning incidents.Resuscitation. 2011; 82: e5
- Rescue and resuscitation or body retrieval – the dilemmas of search and rescue efforts in drowning incidents.Resuscitation. 2011; 82: 799-800
Article info
Publication history
Published online: October 08, 2012
Received:
September 30,
2012
Identification
Copyright
© 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
