Presenter Profile
Rohit P. Shenoi, MD
Division of Emergency Medicine
Baylor College of Medicine
Houston, Texas
Rohit P. Shenoi is a Professor of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine and an Attending Physician in the Emergency Center at Texas Children’s Hospital. He is a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the CDC.
Dr. Shenoi has a long-standing interest in injury prevention, specifically - drowning, opioid stewardship, and screening youth for suicide and drugs in the Emergency Department. He is currently funded by a CDC grant to study subpopulations that experience higher rates of unintentional drowning and investigate the causes and outcomes of these disparities. He has authored several research articles in injury prevention, coauthored the AAP Policy Statement and Technical Report on drowning and was a contributor to the US National Water Safety Action Plan.
Presentations
Using Syndromic Surveillance for Unintentional and Undetermined Intent Drowning Surveillance in a Large Metropolitan Area
Rohit P. Shenoi, MD
Nicholas Peoples, MSc
Jennifer L. Jones, MS
Ned Levine, PhD
The CDC adapted a drowning syndromic surveillance definition for use in National Syndromic Surveillance Program (NSSP) data. However, the accuracy of the syndrome in capturing emergency department (ED) and urgent care (UCC) visits [collectively termed Syndromic Surveillance (SS) visits], and its use in drowning surveillance is unknown. We aimed to determine the percentages of true-positive unintentional and undetermined intent drowning (UUID) cases for all ages in a large metropolitan area based on all cases captured by this definition. A secondary aim was to describe the burden and injury trends of UUID syndromic surveillance visits.
We applied the CDC definition for drowning to data available in NSSP for the 8-county metropolitan Houston area for the years 2018-2022. Data were analyzed after querying the dataset for ICD-10-CM codes for UUID cases and manually reviewing the text describing the chief complaint and discharge diagnosis for UUID SS visits. To calculate the percentage of true-positives, we divided the number of UUID cases by the total visits captured by the syndromic definition for drowning. UUID drowning rates per 100,000 SS visits were calculated as the number of SS visits for UUID divided by the total number of SS visits and multiplied by 100,000.
There were 24,742,818 (ED: 23,870,676; UCC: 872,142) SS visits captured by the NSSP for metropolitan Houston between 2018 to 2022. During the same period, there were 2,759 SS visits for UUID (Mean rate:11.15 UUID SS visits/100,000 SS visits. There were 2,019 cases (72.5%) with ICD-10-CM drowning codes; 2,015 (99.8%) were classified as UUID. Of the remaining 740 cases with no ICD-10-CM codes, 690 (93.2%) cases had a chief complaint or discharge diagnosis text indicating “drowning” or “submersion” or “underwater” or “inhaled water” or “swallowed water” in relation to contact with a body of water and/or specific misspellings. Among all 2,759 visits classified as drowning based on the syndromic surveillance definition for drowning, there were 2,705 (98.0%) cases classified as Yes (true-positive) UUID and 54 (2.0%) classified as “No”. UUID SS visits were lowest during 2020 (9.6/100,000 SS visits). Males and minority groups constituted 48% and 38% of SS visits for UUID respectively. Children aged 0-17 years comprised 79.3% of SS visits for UUID. UUID SS rates for minority groups (11.75/100,000 SS visits) and non-minority groups (11.81/100,000 SS visits) were similar. UUID SS rates for males (13.7/100,000 SS visits) were higher than females (8.5/100,000 SS visits); and higher for non-Hispanics (12.3/100,000 SS visits) compared to Hispanic persons (10.4/100,000 SS visits).
Syndromic surveillance data are a novel source for conducting drowning surveillance in a large metropolitan region. The CDC’s syndromic surveillance definition for drowning accurately captures nearly all SS visits of drowning victims who present to the ED or UCC. It can be used to evaluate racial and ethnic disparities in non-fatal drowning rates.
1. Understand the accuracy of syndromic surveillance in non-fatal drowning surveillance
2. Learn the utility of syndromic surveillance in monitoring drowning injury burden and trends
3. Recognize the usefulness of syndromic surveillance in evaluating racial and ethnic disparities in non-fatal drowning rates
Drowning Prevention
Rohit P. Shenoi, MD
Alicia Webb, MD
What's Known, What’s New and What’s Needed in Injury Prevention
Lorrie Lynn, MA, CPSTI
Rohit P. Shenoi, MD
Keisha Fraser Doh, MD
Ashley Blanchard, MD, MS
This session will highlight the work of our esteemed colleagues in a myriad of injury prevention topics including firearms, drowning, sleep related injuries, suicide, and youth with autism spectrum disorder. The panelists will highlight new trends in epidemiology and intervention strategies. They will further identify gaps in their fields and describe potential solutions to improve future injury prevention efforts.
1. Describe existing disparities in drowning burden and access to drowning countermeasures.
2. Formulate an injury prevention framework to address pediatric drowning.
3. Understand existing burden of SUID, current trends and best practice recommendations.
4. Describe existing disparities in firearm injuries.
5. Formulate an injury prevention framework to address firearm injuries.
6. Understand the trends of injury among children with autism and their unique injury risk and available interventions.