High temperatures are a significant risk factor for human health. In 2022 and 2023 alone, they were responsible for more than 109,000 deaths in Europe, and this number is expected to rise significantly in the coming years. The trend of rising temperatures will also have a significant impact on the workload of emergency medical services, according to a study involving researchers from RECETOX centre.
Despite the significant impact on mortality, no nationwide study has yet been conducted in Europe to examine the effect of high and low temperatures on the workload of emergency medical services (EMS). Researchers from the RECETOX Center at the Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, in collaboration with their colleagues from ISGlobal Barcelona - The Institute for Global Health, decided to change this. Their study confirmed that the trend of rising temperatures will have a significant impact on the workload of emergency medical services.
'We created an epidemiological model that includes daily temperatures and detailed daily data on emergency medical service dispatches over a total of ten years in all 76 districts of the Czech Republic and the capital city of Prague. Based on this model, we found that during days with high and low temperatures, the risk of emergency medical service dispatche is significantly increased. Dispatches are almost twice as frequent on days with high temperatures compared to days with low temperatures. Overall, more than 30,000 emergency medical service dispatches per year in the Czech Republic are associated with non-optimal temperatures,' says the lead author of the study, Tomáš Janoš, an environmental epidemiologist at the RECETOX Center, who focuses on assessing health risks related to environmental factors.
Detailed, age-specific data provided by the Institute of Health Information and Statistics of the Czech Republic (ÚZIS ČR) showed that the most vulnerable groups of the population during hot days are children, adolescents, and young adults. For example, the risk of an EMS dispatch to an adolescent patient aged 10-19 years is up to 70% higher during the hottest days of the year compared to days with optimal temperatures and almost 50% higher than the risk of dispatch to a patient regardless of age. Of all dispatches, almost every tenth dispatch to such a child patient is associated with high temperatures.
'In infants and young children, limited thermoregulation ability or higher risk of dehydration may play a role, while with increasing age towards adolescence and young adulthood, increased risk may be associated with behavioral factors. Children and adolescents tend to spend more time outdoors, leading to increased exposure to ambient temperatures,' explains Tomáš Janoš.
RECETOX Center has long been dedicated to studying the impact of extreme temperatures on human health. Research on mortality, which preceded the current study, showed that approximately one death associated with heat corresponds to ten deaths associated with cold. Given the rising temperatures, this ratio will gradually shift in the opposite direction during the 21st century, so that any decrease in deaths associated with cold will be outweighed by an increase in deaths associated with heat, resulting in a net increase in deaths.
'How rising temperatures during the 21st century will affect emergency medical service dispatches remains unexplored. However, the ratio we see now is concerning, and a rapid increase in the number of heat-related emergency service dispatches can likely be expected during this century. This will pose a significant burden on the relevant services in terms of personnel, economic, and material resources, which could potentially lead to significantly longer response times or partial unavailability of emergency medical services during the hottest days of the year,' concludes Tomáš Janoš.
Full article: https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyaf051
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