— Absolute numbers are still little, however scientist cautions of ongoing impacts of environment modification
by Jennifer Henderson, Business & & Investigative Writer, MedPage Today
October 1, 2024
ORLANDO– Heat-related emergency situation department (ED) gos to skyrocketed over the last 12 years, a retrospective research study at 2 big Texas-based kids’s medical facilities revealed.
As a percentage of overall ED encounters, heat-related gos to increased by 170% from 2012 (4.3 per 10,000) to 2023 (11.6 per 10,000, P=0.01), reported Taylor Merritt, MD, of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Children’s Health in Dallas. In general, there were 542 heat-related ED encounters throughout that time duration.
Heat-related gos to– while increasing– were a low percentage of ED encounters in general, it is “essential for us to understand … how heat is impacting our kids,” particularly “provided increasing temperature levels,” Merritt stated at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) yearly conference. Summertime 2023 was the second-hottest on record in Texas, with a typical high of 98.3 ° F, according to the Dallas Morning News
Merritt kept in mind that environment modification has actually produced record-breaking summer season temperature levels in the U.S. and worldwide, and direct exposure to severe heat is connected with increased heat-related morbidity and death, specifically amongst kids. Pediatric information on patterns over time and results of heat-related disease are doing not have, Merritt stated.
To get a much better sense of those patterns, Merritt and coworkers took a look at pediatric ED records from 2012 to 2023 for heat-related medical diagnoses (consisting of “extreme natural heat” and “impacts of heat and light”) and compared those with rhabdomyolysis medical diagnosis.
They utilized rhabdomyolysis