Hospital admissions for cardiovascular disease may increase after snowstorms
On days with major snowfalls, hospital admissions for cardiovascular disease decreased 32 percent compared with days with no snowfall, according to an analysis of hospital admissions at four hospitals in Boston.
However, two days after major snowfalls, hospital admissions for cardiovascular disease increased 23 percent compared with days with no snowfalls.
The researchers also found that cardiovascular disease admissions were higher on days of moderate snowfalls compared with high snowfalls. They defined major snowfalls as those with more than 10 inches of snow and moderate snowfalls as days with 5.1 to 10 inches of snow.
Lead researcher Jennifer F. Bobb, PhD, of the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle, and colleagues published their results online in the American Journal of Epidemiology on Jan. 30.
“With global climate change, major snowstorms may become more frequent and severe,” Bobb said in a news release. “Understanding trends in hospitalizations related to snowfall will help us develop ways to protect public health during harsh winter conditions.”
The researchers analyzed data on 433,037 adults who were hospitalized during the months of November through April from 2010 to 2015 at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital.
They found that cold-related admissions increased by 3.7 percent on high snowfall days and remained high for five days. Meanwhile, admissions for falls increased an average of 18 percent in the six days after a moderate snowfall day, while hospitalizations for injuries did not increase during snowfall days.
“To our knowledge, this is the first study in which the time course of hospitalizations during and immediately after snowfall days has been examined,” the researchers wrote. “These findings can be translated into interventions that prevent hospitalizations and protect public health during harsh winter conditions.”
Executive Editor
Tim Casey joined TriMed Media Group in 2015 as Executive Editor. For the previous four years, he worked as an editor and writer for HMP Communications, primarily focused on covering managed care issues and reporting from medical and health care conferences. He was also a staff reporter at the Sacramento Bee for more than four years covering professional, college and high school sports. He earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame and his MBA degree from Georgetown University.