How to spot symtoms of "Dry Drowning" from 'eHow'

Swallowing even a small amount of water into your lungs is dead serious! Children have been known to have died latter in the day or in their sleep after aspirating water into their lungs earlier in the day. At WedMd they tell the story of one child who was 10-years old and after a suffering an undisclosed mishap at the pool, walked home from the pool complained that he was tired and died in his sleep that night.

Dry drowning defined by Web MD:

Dry drowning is basically drowning without water. With dry drowning, you are not drowning from an immediate immersion in water; it is more of a delayed effect of a small amount of water in the lungs. This can result in laryngospasms, which minimize the amount of water aspirated into the lungs. Respiratory arrest may follow, leading to an inadequate supply of oxygen in the blood, cardiac arrest, and eventually brain death.

Several other mechanisms can cause dry drowning, including acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), which is an acute, severe injury to most or all of both lungs or electrolyte abnormalities resulting from a dilution of the blood after aspirated water is absorbed into the blood, leading to heart rhythm abnormalities.

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Translation: the water in the lungs decreases the hearts ability to move oxygen into the blood thereby causing the victim to slowly asphyxiate which results in heart failure, brain death, etc, etc.

eHow has an article on how to spot symptoms of dry-drowning here:

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