The Emergency Call on Drowning

Not yet recruiting

• Conditions: Drowning, Near; Drowning and Submersion, Undetermined Intent; Drowning and Submersion While in Swimming-Pool; Drowning; Asphyxia; Drowning and Nonfatal Submersion; Drowning or Immersion of Unknown Intent; Drowning and Submersion While in Bath-Tub; Drowning and Submersion Due to Fall Off Ship; Drowning; Anoxia; Drowning and Submersion While in Natural Water
• Interventions: Other: Drowning-related OHCA; Other: Drowning-related non-OHCA

• Registration Number: NCT06310486
• Lead Sponsor: Prehospital Center, Region Zealand

Brief Summary

This study aims to 1) describe patient-, setting-, and dispatcher-related characteristics in drowning-related emergency calls to the Emergency Medical Dispatch Centre (1-1-2 emergency phone) and 2) factors associated with 30-day survival. The investigators will separately analyse drowning-related out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) and drowning-related non-OHCA. If feasible, the investigators will qualitatively analyse the calls to identify and describe potential barriers for an optimal handling strategy.

Detailed Description

Previous studies have explored emergency priority levels, emergency call categorisations, barriers to assessing an emergency call, and the effects on the outcome. However, this has never been done specifically for drowning patients. Drowning presents a rare and special circumstance that may be particularly complex for laypeople and medical dispatchers for several reasons. Despite this complexity and medical dispatchers' potential to optimize treatment and improve outcomes in drowning incidents, the characteristics of drowning-related emergency calls have never been explored.

This protocol presents a registry-based cohort study of drowning-related emergency medical calls to the EMDC (1-1-2 emergency phone) with 30-day follow-up.

Data from the national Danish Prehospital Drowning Data will be linked with audio files and electronic data from the EMDC database using the patient's unique civil registration numbers.

The investigators will construct two lists of variables: one list for OHCA and one for non-OHCA emergency calls. Data collection from the EMDC database will consist of three phases.

In phase 1, three independent reviewers will listen to 20 emergency calls on drowning (10 OHCA and 10 non-OHCA) to identify relevant variables from the calls (e.g., presence of key symptoms \[since an emergency call often does not contain information regarding the absence of symptoms\], communication barriers \[anything that comes in the way of receiving and understanding information\], pre-arrival instructions to callers etc.).

In phase 2, the same reviewers will listen to 20 other emergency calls (10 OHCA and 10 non-OHCA) and use the lists for data collection to determine the data availability and completeness. This may result in modifications to the lists of variables. The investigators will use the results as a basis for reviewer training and calculate inter-rater reliability.

Once the reviewers' performances are satisfying (defined as Fleiss kappa ≥0.8), the investigators will move to phase 3 and collect data for all the drowning calls. Emergency calls will be stratified as OHCA or non-OHCA calls.

Study Timeline

• Status Verified: 2024-03
• Study First Submitted: 2024-03-07
• Study First Submitted QC: 2024-03-13
• Last Update Submitted: 2024-03-13
• Study First Posted: 2024-03-15
• Last Update Posted: 2024-03-15
• Study Start: 2024-05-01
• Primary Completion: 2025-12-31
• Study Completion: 2025-12-31

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: NOT_YET_RECRUITING
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 1500

Inclusion Criteria

• Patients at all ages registered in the Danish Prehospital Drowning Data are eligible.

Exclusion Criteria

• Obvious clinical signs of irreversible death (decapitation, decomposition, post-mortem lividity, post-mortem rigidity)
• A valid Do-Not-Attempt-Resuscitation (DNAR) order or other code status orders limiting life-sustaining therapies
• Missing or corrupted audio files
• Missing identification number
• Missing 30-day survival

Study & Design

• Study Type: OBSERVATIONAL
• Study Design: Not specified

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Fatal drowning	Drowning-related OHCA	These patients experienced a drowning incident and died within 30 days after the incident because of their submersion injury.
Non-fatal drowning	Drowning-related non-OHCA	These patients experienced a drowning incident and survived until 30 days after the incident.
Non-fatal drowning	Drowning-related OHCA	These patients experienced a drowning incident and survived until 30 days after the incident.
Fatal drowning	Drowning-related non-OHCA	These patients experienced a drowning incident and died within 30 days after the incident because of their submersion injury.

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Patient-related characteristics influencing the 30-day survival	30 days after the drowning incident	Describe patient-related characteristics in drowning-related emergency calls to the EMDC (1-1-2 emergency phone)
Caller-related characteristics influencing the 30-day survival	30 days after the drowning incident	Describe caller-related characteristics in drowning-related emergency calls to the EMDC (1-1-2 emergency phone)
Setting-related characteristics influencing the 30-day survival	30 days after the drowning incident	Describe setting-related characteristics in drowning-related emergency calls to the EMDC (1-1-2 emergency phone)
Dispatcher-related characteristics influencing the 30-day survival	30 days after the drowning incident	Describe dispatcher-related characteristics in drowning-related emergency calls to the EMDC (1-1-2 emergency phone)

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Prehospital Center; 🇩🇰 Næstved, Region Zealand, Denmark