14 DAY TRIAL // A new cross-sectional study revealed that every 5°C (41°F) temperature rise, increases the rate of kids' hospital admissions for serious injury by 10%.
Each time the temperature rises by 5°C, this boosts up hospital admissions rates for serious injuries among children, concluded this new research – one of the largest studies of its kind, led by researchers from Warwick Medical School – University of Warwick, University Hospitals of Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, and the Trauma Audit and Research Network, University of Manchester, Manchester Medical Academic Health Sciences Center, Clinical Sciences Building, Hope Hospital, UK.
On the other hand, every 5°C drop in the minimum daily temperature increases adult admissions for serious injury by more than 3%, as for snow it causes an 8% rise, the research shows.
The authors said that “the results of this extensive study, covering many trauma units of varying size and location over an extensive period of time, show strong and intuitively convincing relationships between recorded weather and trauma admissions.”
The authors based their conclusions on data from the Trauma Audit and research Network (TARN), on the patterns of hospital treatments for both children and adults, in 21 emergency care units all over England, between 1996 and 2006.
In this research was included every patient needing hospital admission for over three days, a transfer to another hospital or to critical care, and also patients who have died after being injured.
The point was to see if there were any clear temporal patterns, that could be linked to weather conditions.
Little under 60,000 patients were included, with and average age of 48 years for adults, and 10 years for children.
For adults, every 5°C rise in maximum daily temperature along with every additional two hours of sunshine rose the admission rate for serious injury by just under 2%.
In children, the pattern was even stronger, with a rise of 5°C triggering a 10% increase in admissions, and two extra hours of sunlight – a 6% increase.
At this rate, the authors calculated that between April and September, the children's admission rate could be 50% higher than average.
Another important observation is that admissions peaked during weekends.
This study was published online in Emergency Medicine Journal.