BACKGROUND: Drowning is classified as the process of respiratory impairment resulting from submersion or immersion in a liquid medium and represents a serious public health problem worldwide. The importance of lifeguards in minimizing these incidents is clear, since safe rescue and resuscitation performed by trained professionals are essential to the victim`s chances of survival. Biomechanical and physiological variables are directly associated with swimming speed and, consequently, the time taken to rescue the victim, as well as reducing energy expenditure during this process. This scoping review aimed to identify the biomechanical and physiological aspects most studied in the literature on aquatic rescue, and to synthesize their associations with lifeguard performance. METHODS: This scoping review was conducted in accordance with the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodological guidelines and adopted the recommendations of the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR). Searches were conducted across three international databases and three sources of grey literature. The eligibility criteria were defined based on the Participants, Concept, and Context (PCC) mnemonic. Studies that evaluated lifeguards in controlled or real-life settings were included, and data extraction focused on biomechanical and physiological aspects of lifeguard performance. RESULTS: The present scoping review included 13 studies, of which 76.9% evaluated physiological aspects and 53.8% evaluated biomechanical aspects. The most evaluated variables were swimming speed, VO2, blood lactate concentration, and heart rate. High levels of swimming speed, stroke index, and stroke length were related to better aquatic rescue test performance. No physiological variables were directly correlated with rescue performance. CONCLUSIONS: Biomechanical and physiological aspects seem to be very important for aquatic rescue performance. The results may guide future investigations, highlighting gaps in the literature that demonstrate the lack of evidence on kinetic parameters related to performance in aquatic rescues and the limited number of studies that evaluated lifeguards in real-life situations.
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