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Characterizing Cold Water Drownings In The Great Lakes, Elizabeth T. Helfrich, Anthony Lagina

Medical Student Research Symposium

Since the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, Great Lakes drownings have increased. The Great Lakes are a unique and understudied environment due to being cold, fresh water, and resuscitation protocols and guidelines being derived from warm, primarily salt water environments. We analyzed open sources materials to find records of Great Lakes drownings from 2021-2023 and analyze the data looking for trends in cold and warm water drownings.

We found 80.0-85.0% of the included drowning victims were male and had an average age of 38.0-39.0 years old. 40.0%-57.7% of Great Lakes drowning deaths were in cold water; of those, Lake Michigan had …