Drowning and Cardiac Arrest: What Happens, How Serious It Is, and What Families May Face

Can Cardiac Arrest Happen Because of Drowning?

Drowning is a breathing injury first. It means a person's breathing is impaired because they are submerged in water or another liquid, or held in it with their airway unprotected. The airway fills or closes, the person cannot get air, and oxygen levels drop. When the body runs low on oxygen for long enough, the heart stops beating effectively. That stop is cardiac arrest.

The order matters. Doctors sometimes call this an asphyxial arrest, meaning the heart stopped because breathing stopped. It is different from a primary cardiac event, where a problem in the heart itself, such as a blockage, is what starts the crisis.

A healthy child or a strong swimmer can go into cardiac arrest in the water, and the medical team may be treating the heart and lungs together because of how the arrest began. Knowing the sequence can make the hospital conversations easier to follow, and it is also how the medical records will usually describe what happened.

For a family, this means the key questions are usually about the water, not the heart: how long the person went without oxygen, and how quickly someone began rescue breathing and chest compressions. Those facts are central to the medical outcome, and later to any account of who was watching and how the rescue unfolded.

When a Loved One's Heart Stopped: What It Can Mean for the Brain

The brain needs a steady supply of oxygen, and it is one of the first organs affected when that supply stops. Two terms come up often in hospital conversations. A hypoxic brain injury is harm caused by too little oxygen reaching the brain. An anoxic brain injury is harm caused when oxygen to the brain stops completely. In a drowning cardiac arrest, either can happen, and doctors may use one term or both. Hearing either word does not, on its own, say how severe the injury is.

Brain cells begin to be harmed within minutes once oxygen stops, which is why the first minutes of a rescue carry so much weight. The exact timeline differs from person to person, and the medical team caring for your loved one is the source for what it means in their case.

Very cold water has been described as slowing the body's processes in some cases, though it does not reliably protect anyone and it can bring dangers of its own.

Outcomes after a drowning cardiac arrest cover a wide range. Some people recover fully. Some survive with lasting harm to memory, movement, speech or awareness. Some do not survive. A person who survives is said to have had a nonfatal drowning, a term that covers everything from a full recovery to a severe, lifelong injury. Doctors often cannot say right away where on that range a person will be, and that uncertainty is its own weight to carry.

For many families, the brain injury, more than the cardiac arrest itself, shapes the long road ahead: rehabilitation, care at home and changes to work and family life. In a legal account, it is often the brain injury that defines the harm.

Where These Accidents Happen and Why the Setting Matters

A drowning cardiac arrest can happen almost anywhere there is water deep enough to cover the nose and mouth. The settings include:

• hotel and resort pools
• apartment and condominium pools
• water parks
• public beaches and lakes
• private and backyard pools
• rivers
• boating accidents
• hot tubs, spas and bathtubs

The duties owed to a person in the water depend on who owns or runs the place and what relationship that person had with them. A hotel guest, an apartment tenant, a water park visitor, a child at a neighbor's party and a passenger on a boat may each stand in a different position under the law. Some places have lifeguards and some do not. Some are subject to equipment rules, such as the drain-cover rules discussed on our page on hot tub drowning, and some are private homes. Our page on bathtub drowning covers one setting families often do not expect.

If you are trying to make sense of what happened, the setting is often the first piece of the picture. Who owned the pool or the beach? Who ran it day to day? Was anyone assigned to watch the water? Was rescue equipment there? A setting alone never shows that anyone did something wrong, but it decides which duties may have applied, and which deadlines, such as shorter notice periods for public places, may come into play. Sorting out who controlled the place is one of the things a conversation with an attorney can help with.

How Serious Is a Drowning Cardiac Arrest — and What Shapes the Outcome

Submersion time, meaning how long the person was under the water, is the factor most often tied to outcome. The longer the brain goes without oxygen, the greater the risk of serious injury or death.

Other factors follow close behind:

• whether someone nearby began rescue breathing and CPR right away
• whether an automated external defibrillator, or AED, was available and used
• how quickly emergency medical services arrived
• the quality of resuscitation at the scene and at the hospital
• water temperature, in some circumstances

Bystander CPR and early care are described as improving the chances of survival and of a better neurological outcome. This is one reason families, months later, often replay the minutes after the person was found. That replaying is a natural part of grief and shock, and it is also where many families' questions about responsibility begin.

A family caring for a survivor with a brain injury is often thinking about years of medical care and support. A family that has lost someone is facing grief and, sometimes, questions about whether that loss could have been prevented.

How long the person was submerged, who saw what and when, and how the rescue unfolded become the factual record in any legal account. Whether a faster or different response would have changed the outcome turns on those facts.

After a Drowning: Which Records Families Often Ask About

If someone you love was hurt or died, the records that often come up include:

• incident and accident reports written by the facility or operator
• emergency medical services and hospital records
• surveillance or security camera footage
• lifeguard logs, schedules and staffing records
• pool inspection and maintenance records
• records for the AED and other rescue equipment
• the names and contact information of people who saw what happened
• photos and video taken at the scene by anyone present

Some of these records are kept by the family, such as photos taken that day or hospital paperwork. Many are held by others: the property owner, the operator, emergency responders or the hospital. Some, especially camera footage, may be recorded over or lost, and equipment may be repaired or replaced after an accident.

What is at stake is that the records best able to show how the rescue unfolded are often the ones a family does not hold and that can disappear first. If footage is overwritten or equipment replaced, that part of the picture may be gone. Families in the middle of a medical crisis or a funeral rarely have room for paperwork, and that is understandable. Many keep what they already have, write down names while they remember them, and set aside anything from the scene.

A conversation with our attorney can cover which records may exist in a situation like yours and how families typically go about requesting them; you can request a case evaluation.

When a Family Asks Who Is Responsible: Legal Claims a Drowning Cardiac Arrest May Involve

For a family asking whether anyone is responsible, the law of negligence frames the answer as four questions: whether someone owed the injured person a duty of care, whether they breached that duty, whether the breach caused the injury, and whether the injury caused harm the law recognizes, called damages. A drowning, however tragic, does not by itself answer any of these. The answers come from what happened.

Several legal theories may apply:

• Premises liability asks whether the owner or operator of the place where your loved one was lawfully present kept it reasonably safe. In a drowning, that can mean looking at the pool, fencing, gates, drains, depth markings and safety equipment.
• Negligent supervision is a failure to provide adequate oversight, whether by a lifeguard, a facility operator, a caregiver or another person responsible for watching swimmers, especially children.
• A lifeguard or aquatic facility that takes on the job of watching the water generally takes on duties to watch, to respond and to give aid. What that duty requires in a given place depends on state law and the facts.
• Product liability may matter if a product involved, such as pool equipment, a drain cover, rescue equipment or an AED, was defective and caused harm. That claim can be separate from one against the property owner, so a family may be looking at more than one possible responsible party.

When a drowning is fatal, the claim may become a wrongful death claim, which is a claim surviving family members can bring when a death was caused by another's negligence or wrongful act. Who may bring it, and what it may cover, differ from state to state.

The categories of damages the law may allow can include medical expenses, rehabilitation, lost income or earning capacity, pain and suffering and, in a death, loss of companionship. Which categories a state allows, and any limits on them, depend on that state's law.

Every claim also has a statute of limitations, the deadline for filing a lawsuit. These deadlines differ by state, and some states set shorter notice deadlines for claims against government bodies, such as a public beach or city pool. A claim filed after the deadline can be lost regardless of its facts, which is why the deadline is part of the stakes. Our state pages, such as the ones for Florida drowning claims and Arizona drowning claims, set out each state's rules from its own statutes, and our drowning accident lawyer overview explains how these pieces fit together. Which deadline and which theories may apply is something a conversation with an attorney can help sort out.