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Doctors in the US south-west have reported a rise in first-, second-, and third-degree contact burn cases amid extreme heat conditions. The reports of severe burn incidents, some fatal, came from hospitals in Arizona and Nevada, where temperatures have recently reached triple digits and deaths from heat-related conditions have surged.
Dr Kara Geren, an emergency medicine physician at Valleywise Health in Phoenix, told NBC burns suffered when people pass out and fall on to superheated outdoor surfaces such as roads or sidewalks “can be very severe and disfiguring to the point where you have to have what’s called a skin graft, where they take skin from other parts of your body and kind of cover it up”.
Her hospital’s burns unit, she said, was “very full. It just keeps going.”
Geren also said that although she usually sees heat-related cases in summer, this summer has proved much worse than usual.
“Some people get to the point where they’re no longer sweating,” she told ABC15. “A lot of people are very lightheaded, dizzy, cramps, feeling very poorly.”
Geren said one patient she saw recently had a body temperature of 110F (43.3C), which can be fatal. Normal body temperatures range from 97.5F to 98.9F (36C to 37C), according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.
The use of inflatable rafts is now common in emergency rooms. They are filled with as much as 10 gallons of ice, to help the overheated cool down.
Severe burns cases on rise in US south-west as extreme heatwave takes toll | US weather | The Guardianhttps://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/21/burns-cases-excessive-heat-arizona-nevada