Terms such as “near drowning,” “dry or wet drowning,”
“secondary drowning,” “active and passive drowning,” and “delayed onset of respiratory
distress” should be avoided.13 A uniform way to report data after a drowning
event in order to allow comparison among different medical centers is to adopt the
Utstein template for categorization of drowning (for details, see the Supplementary
Appendix, available with the full text of this article at NEJM.org