by Tiffany Miller

Created on: September 20, 2009   Last Updated: September 23, 2009

Dry drowning: Symptoms and treatments

Symptoms of dry drowning are better understood and easier to identify if you know what to look for. The average person does not know what dry drowning is, unless it has happened to them or seen someone else experience it, much less what to look for. So to better educate the reader about the symptoms of dry drowning, I need to first attempt to explain what dry drowning is, then a brief explanation of what can cause dry drowning. Then, I will point out the symptoms that need to be looked for, and provide ways a patient can be treated for dry drowning.

First, let's take an anatomy lesson. The lungs are sacks in the chest that hold oxygen. The diaphragm is a muscle below the lungs that expand and contract, causing the lungs to expand and contract, drawing in air like a sort of vacuum. The lungs have things called alveoli. Alveoli are found branching off the bronchioles. They are the primary place where gas is exchanged with the blood. But before air can get to the Alveoli, it first has to be breathed in through the larynx found in the pharynx (wind pipe).

Typically, when a person is drowning the larynx spasms shut so that the liquid can not get into the lungs, but if that was all then we could breathe under water right? Well what happens is the diaphragm keeps expanding and contracting, trying to get air into the oxygen deprived body. This vacuum can pull open the larynx in small amounts before it closes again. It takes just two table spoons of a liquid in the lungs to drown a child. If the person does not drown by oxygen deprivation (Hypoxia), it is a good chance they could by a build up of carbon dioxide in the body (Acidosis) which is the gas that the body produces and is usually exhaled with the transfer of oxygen. With dry drowning, however, the fluid that is getting into the lungs is not foreign. We use the term dry drowning, but the person is actually drowning in their own bodily fluids. This happens when the vessels that carry deoxygenated blood to the lungs become too narrow for the red blood cells to pass through freely. The blood is not taking in oxygen or releasing carbon dioxide effectively. The vacuum trying to get air in is drawing in fluid from the vasculature instead and into the airspaces of the lung.

So what causes dry drowning? Typically, dry drowning involves larynx spasms and immediate hypoxia (oxygen deprivation) and death, not delayed pulmonary edema (the hearts inability to remove the fluid from lung

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