Abstract
The incidence of cardiac dyspnea (CD) and the distribution of pollution in the south of France suggests that environmental pollution may have a role in disease triggering. CD is a hallmark symptom of heart failure leading to reduced ability to function and engage in activities of daily living. To show the impact of short-term pollution exposure on the increment of CD emergency room visits, we collected pollutants and climate measurements on a daily basis and 43,400 events of CD in the Région Sud from 2013 to 2018. We used a distributed lag non-linear model (DLNM) to assess the association between air pollution and CD events. We divided the region in 357 zones to reconciliate environmental and emergency room visits data. We applied the DLNM on the entire region, on zones grouped by pollution trends and on singular zones. Each pollutant has a significant effect on triggering CD. Depending on the pollutant, we identified four shapes of exposure curves to describe the impact of pollution on CD events: early and late effect for NO2; U-shape and rainbow-shape (or inverted U) for O3; all the four shapes for PM10. In the biggest cities, O3 has the most significant association along with the PM10. In the west side, a delayed effect triggered by PM10 was found. Zones along the main highway are mostly affected by NO2 pollution with an increase of the association for a period up to 9 days after the pollution peak. Our results can be used by local authorities to set up specific prevention policies, public alerts that adapt to the different zones and support public health prediction-making. We developed a user-friendly web application called Health, Environment in PACA Region Tool (HEART) to collect our results. HEART will allow citizens, researchers and local authorities to monitor the impact of pollution trends on local public health.
Highlights
The incidence of cardiac dyspnea (CD) and the distribution of pollution in the south of France suggests that environmental pollution may have a role in disease triggering
The emergency room visits data is composed by 43,400 CD events collected by the 47 emergency centers of Région Sud in the period from 1st January 2013 to 31st December 2018 reporting an event of CD with symptoms related to either heart failure (I50 codes, 98% of the events) or atrial fibrillation (I48 codes, 2% of the events) (Table 1)
This is the first study of pollution associations on CD events done in Région Sud and, as far as we know, the first study to cover an entire region
Summary
The incidence of cardiac dyspnea (CD) and the distribution of pollution in the south of France suggests that environmental pollution may have a role in disease triggering. CD is a hallmark symptom of heart failure leading to reduced ability to function and engage in activities of daily living. We used a distributed lag non-linear model (DLNM) to assess the association between air pollution and CD events. Cardiac dyspnea (CD) is a hallmark symptom of heart failure leading to reduced ability to function and engage in activities of daily living[1]. This pathology affects people aged more that 65 years old with a slight higher prevalence rate in w omen[2]. Hospital admissions and mortality rate, causing mainly respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, including CD4–6, whereas a long-term exposure reduces life e xpectancy[7,8,9,10,11]
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