Remind patients: It's time to stay cool

With the weather heating up, doctors caution at-risk patients about the importance of avoiding summer swelter, and public health has emergency plans ready.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff. July 28, 2003.

For physicians and patients, the dangers of summer have arrived.

In California, two children died after an hour in a parked car in 100-degree heat. In Illinois, an elderly woman was discovered in her closed house unconscious and brought to an emergency department with a 106-degree temperature. She later recovered. In New York, a 62-year-old man with a history of cardiovascular disease went for a drive only to be found five hours later in his parked car. Unconscious and with a temperature approaching 108, he died two days later.

"I'd never seen anybody quite so heatstroked out," said Paolo Coppola, MD, medical director of emergency services for Brookhaven Hospital in Patchogue, N.Y., who treated the 62-year-old patient. "This guy had sat in an oven and baked for five hours."

As things heat up, physicians are dealing with their first heat-related casualties and advising others to keep cool. For some patients, the message is that certain medications they take could make them more susceptible to heat-related illness. But for others -- those most vulnerable to the heat, such as the elderly -- the advice is to switch on the air conditioning. If they don't have it, they should be urged to take frequent showers or to get to someplace like a mall or library for at least a little while every day to give their bodies a break. Doctors are also reminding parents not to leave kids in the car and amateur athletes to keep drinking fluids and take frequent cooling breaks.

"The best treatment for heat illness is prevention," said Michael Barrow, MD, a sports medicine and family physician at Samaritan North Family Physicians in Dayton, Ohio. "You want to talk to patients about drinking plenty of fluids, but also about getting out of the heat."