Photo: The Canadian Press
Dr. Paul Pugsley, medical director of the emergency department at Valleywise Health Medical Center in Phoenix;
of The first heatwave of the season With triple-digit temperatures already plaguing the Southwest, firefighters in Phoenix, America’s hottest big city, are employing new tactics to try to save more lives in a county that saw 645 heatstroke deaths last year.
This season, the Phoenix Fire Department began immersing heatstroke patients in ice water on the way to area hospitals. The medical technique, known as cold water immersion, is familiar to marathon runners and military personnel and has recently become standard practice at Phoenix hospitals, Fire Chief John Plato said.
Demonstrating the method earlier this week outside the emergency department at Valleywise Health Medical Center in Phoenix, surrounded by impermeable blue bags stuffed with ice and medical dummies meant to represent patients, Plato said the technique can dramatically reduce body temperature in a matter of minutes.
“Last week, we were able to resuscitate a critically ill patient before he even entered the emergency room,” Plato said. “Our goal is to improve the survival rate of our patients.”
Phoenix Fire Department emergency vehicles are now equipped with ice and man-sized immersion bags as standard equipment to combat heatstroke, one of several measures the city has adopted this year as temperatures rise and fatalities soar. For the first time in Phoenix, two Cooling Station This season we will be open at night.
Emergency responders across much of the region, from southeastern California to central Arizona, are preparing for what the National Weather Service said will be “by far the hottest” weather. Since last SeptemberThe high temperature forecast for Wednesday in Las Vegas was just one degree lower than the 109 degrees Fahrenheit (42.8 degrees Celsius) recorded on June 5, 2016.
“There’s very high pressure over the South West which is bringing the first heatwave of the summer to the region,” Met Office chief meteorologist Sean Benedict said. Weather Services In addition to Arizona, the Phoenix-based scientist said sweltering heat was expected to hit eastern and northern California, Nevada and parts of southern Texas over the next few days.
Extreme heat warnings were in effect for parts of southern Nevada and Arizona from Wednesday morning through Friday evening, with highs in Las Vegas and Phoenix expected to exceed 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 degrees Celsius) over the next few days. Unseasonably hot weather It is expected to move northward and reach parts of the Pacific Northwest by the weekend.
Phoenix officials on Wednesday morning Closed The popular Camelback Mountain and Piestewa Peak trails will be open through the weekend from 9am to 5pm.
In southern New Mexico, where temperatures are expected to reach triple digits, the city of Las Cruces activated a cooling center on Wednesday to give residents temporary shelter from the heat. A heat advisory for the region will remain in effect until Thursday.
Albuquerque’s mayor announced this year’s “Operation Cool Down” on Wednesday, which includes plans to install cooling centers and sprinklers in city parks to help children stay cool.
The City Council in Tucson, Arizona’s second-largest city, passed a heat-safety ordinance this week to give city employees access to cold water, shade and additional breaks at work. Councillors also approved a plan to cool people’s homes, community centers and neighborhoods in east Phoenix to better protect the area from scorching heat.
The move comes after 176 heatstroke deaths occurred in Pima County, home to Tucson, last year, and 51 other similar deaths in five other rural counties served by the coroner.
Earlier this year, Maricopa County officials were shocked to learn that 645 people had died from heatstroke in Arizona’s largest county, most of them in Phoenix. The worst heat wave, which saw 31 days of temperatures above 110 degrees Fahrenheit, killed more than 400 people.
“We’ve seen a sharp increase in cases of severe heatstroke over the last three years,” said Dr. Paul Pugsley, director of emergency medicine at Valleywise Health. About 40% of those cases don’t survive.
Cooling patients long before they arrive at the emergency department could make a difference, he said.
The technology “has not been widely adopted in prehospital settings, either in non-military hospitals in the U.S. or among fire departments or paramedics,” Pugsley said. Part of that may be due to a long-standing perception by paramedics and even hospitals that it’s impractical or impossible to apply the technology to every case of heatstroke, he said.
Pugsley said he is aware of limited use of the technology in some locations, including Stanford Medical Center in Palo Alto, California, and Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno, California, as well as the San Antonio Fire Department in Texas.
Banner University Medical Center in Phoenix adopted the protocol last summer, said Dr. Aneesh Narang, associate director of emergency medicine at the center.
“This cold water immersion therapy is the standard of care in treating patients with heat stroke,” he said.