Abstract
Background: Heatwaves have a severe impact on the number of deaths and emergency department visits, making them the most hazardous natural disaster due to climate change in many regions of the world. Our aim was to assess the short-term association between emergency department visits and heat waves from 2013 to 2017 to see whether any difference in the number of visits occurred at the Emergency Department in Ljubljana University Medical Centre during that period. Methods: The design of our study is a retrospective cross-sectional epidemiologic study. We estimated relative risks (RR) for a number of ED visits during heatwave days and reference period days for the observed diagnoses (all causes, diseases of the circulatory system, respiratory system, endocrine diseases, diseases of the digestive system and genitourinary diseases) sex, and age (from 19 to 74 years old, 75 years old and older), as well as 99.6% confidence intervals (CI) and excess ED visits in percent (%) associated with heatwaves occurring in the years from 2014 to 2017. Data were analyzed for the patients arriving at the Emergency Department of the Ljubljana University Medical Centre during summer time, from May to September. The region covers around 550,000 people and is considered an urban and rural area. Results: The results of our study showed that there was no statistically significant increase in number of ED visits during heatwaves for all causes in all observed years. We noticed even statistically significant protective phenomena between heatwaves and the number of ED visits. These happened in the years 2015 and 2017 for both sexes and circulatory system diseases, in 2016 for men, circulatory system diseases, and in 2015 for respiratory system diseases. We showed a statistically significant association between heatwaves and the number of visits in the ED for endocrine diseases in 2013. Conclusion: Despite the increased heat load in the last observed years, the number of ED visits in Ljubljana has remained stable or even decreased. Further studies on how each intervention affects the behavior of the observed population are needed to clarify whether public health measures and inter-sectoral cooperation impact the number of ED visits.
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