Brutal heat waves covering large swathes of world right now are forcing healthcare workers to come up with new ways to keep patients cool.
Several areas have hit record temperatures, as sweltering conditions continue across North America and Europe. Death Valley in California recorded a "mind-boggling" 120 degrees Fahrenheit — at 1am.
And the effects this heat is having on people's bodies are devastating. Some hospital staff are packing overheated patients in body bags with a bucket of ice to cool them down, The Wall Street Journal reports. Others have resorted to putting them in wet hospital gowns and sitting them in front of fans.
In more severe cases, patients are even showing up comatose, with doctors sometimes prolonging these comas to protect their brains — a frightening reality of unprecedented heat surges that have already put millions at risk across the globe.
"They’re coming in essentially unresponsive and they’re cooked," Aneesh Narang, an emergency medicine physician at Banner-University Medical Center in Phoenix, who had several patients come in with body temperatures as high as 109 Fahrenheit, told NBC last week.
The risks of excess exposure to extreme heat are significant. Symptoms can range from dizziness, nausea, and severe dehydration to comas and death. Heat strokes are particularly dangerous, and can even prove fatal.
Extreme heat can also mess with the body's innate coping mechanisms, like venting off heat by producing sweat.
"You’re kind of cooking from the inside, unfortunately," Narang told NBC.
Worse yet, the summer has only begun, and healthcare workers are worried about what 2023 still has in store for us.
"We’re still early- to mid-July, and July and August are probably our two toughest months in this area," Narang added. "I anticipate things will get worse, unfortunately."
And that's without getting into every future summer.
More on extreme heat: Scientists Horrified as Sea Surface Temperatures Spike Off the Charts
Share This Article