Clinical characteristics of elderly drowning patients

Drowning is one of the major causes of traumatic death. The impact of drowning in the elderly and patients who were not elderly will be different because of physiological differences. We wanted to analyze the clinical differences such as mortality, incidence rate of complications, degree of hypothermia and rate of cardiac arrest between elderly and adult drowning patients.

This study included drowning patients over 18 years old who came to an emergency department (ED) located on a riverside from September 1997 to July 2016. Patients over the age of 65 years were classified as elderly, while those under the age of 65 years were classified as adults. Demographic data and clinical outcomes were surveyed.

A total of 611 patients were included in this study. Sixty-one patients (9.9%) were elderly, and 550 patients (90.1%) were adults. There were 17 elderly patients (15.8%) and 87 adult patients (27.9%) who had cardiac arrest at the time of ED arrival (p = 0.017). The rate of body temperatures < 34 °C was higher in elderly patients than that in adult patients (27.9% vs 17.5%, respectively, p = 0.025). The rates of hospitalization in the intensive care unit (ICU) and mortality were higher in elderly group (23% vs. 15.1%, respectively, p = 0.01; 37.7% vs 21.8%, respectively, p = 0.01). There was no significant difference in suicidal intent between the elderly and adult patient groups (82.0% vs 78.9%, respectively, p = 0.421).

Elderly drowning patients accounted for approximately 1/10 of all drowning cases and were more likely to experience a cardiac arrest, hypothermia, mortality, and ICU admission.