Trends in competitive freediving accidents.

Introduction: Understanding safety issues in competitive freediving is necessary for taking preventive actions and to minimise the risk for the athletes.

Methods: We analysed occurrence of loss of consciousness (LOC) and pulmonary barotrauma (PBt) in various freediving disciplines in 988 competitions over five years (from 2019 to 2023 inclusive), with 38,789 officially registered performances (starts): 26,403 in pool disciplines and 12,386 in depth disciplines.

Results: Average incident rate in competitive freediving (all cases: LOCs plus PBt, 2019-2023) was 3.