Drowning is the 3rd leading cause of unintentional injury death worldwide, accounting for nearly 400,000 deaths annually. Global estimates may significantly underestimate the actual public health problem related to drowning. The care of the submersion victim is complex. It often involves a multi-agency approach with several different organisations being independently responsible for different phases of the victims care from the initial aquatic rescue, on scene resuscitation, transfer to hospital and hospital care. A key question in the prehospital phase of care is the duration of submersion beyond which the chance of survival becomes negligible. Beyond this point the focus of care should shift from rescue and resuscitation to body recovery. Variation in practices between rescue and healthcare agencies has led to anecdotal reports of the opening of body bags and recommencement of resuscitative efforts on transfer of a victim from one agency to another. It is therefore timely that in this issue of Resuscitation, Michael Tipton and Frank Golden present the outcome of a multi-agency workshop set up to develop a guideline for the search, rescue and resuscitation of submersion victims.
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