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The Scorching Truth: Investigating the Impact of Heatwaves on Selangor’s Elderly Hospitalisations

Global climate change has contributed to the intensity, frequency, and duration of heatwave events. The association between heatwaves and elderly mortality is highly researched in developed countries. In contrast, heatwave impact on hospital admissions has been insufficiently studied worldwide due t...

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Autores principales: Yong, Kun Hing, Teo, Yen Nee, Azadbakht, Mohsen, Phung, Hai, Chu, Cordia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10218161/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37239636
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20105910
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author Yong, Kun Hing
Teo, Yen Nee
Azadbakht, Mohsen
Phung, Hai
Chu, Cordia
author_facet Yong, Kun Hing
Teo, Yen Nee
Azadbakht, Mohsen
Phung, Hai
Chu, Cordia
author_sort Yong, Kun Hing
collection PubMed
description Global climate change has contributed to the intensity, frequency, and duration of heatwave events. The association between heatwaves and elderly mortality is highly researched in developed countries. In contrast, heatwave impact on hospital admissions has been insufficiently studied worldwide due to data availability and sensitivity. In our opinion, the relationship between heatwaves and hospital admissions is worthwhile to explore as it could have a profound impact on healthcare systems. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the associations between heatwaves and hospitalisations for the elderly by age group in Selangor, Malaysia, from 2010 to 2020. We further explored the impact of heatwaves on the risks of cause-specific hospital admissions across age groups within the elderly. This study applied generalized additive models (GAMs) with the Poisson family and distributed lag models (DLMs) to estimate the effect of heatwaves on hospitalisations. According to the findings, there was no significant increase in hospitalisations for those aged 60 and older during heatwaves; however, a rise in mean apparent temperature (ATmean) by 1 °C significantly increased the risk of hospital admission by 12.9%. Heatwaves had no immediate effects on hospital admissions among elderly patients, but significant delay effects were identified for ATmean with a lag of 0–3 days. The hospital admission rates of the elderly groups started declining after a 5-day average following the heatwave event. Females were found to be relatively more vulnerable than males during heatwave periods. Consequently, these results can provide a reference to improve public health strategies to target elderly people who are at the greatest risk of hospitalisations due to heatwaves. Development of early heatwave and health warning systems for the elderly would assist with preventing and reducing health risks while also minimising the burden on the whole hospital system in Selangor, Malaysia.
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spelling pubmed-102181612023-05-27 The Scorching Truth: Investigating the Impact of Heatwaves on Selangor’s Elderly Hospitalisations Yong, Kun Hing Teo, Yen Nee Azadbakht, Mohsen Phung, Hai Chu, Cordia Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Global climate change has contributed to the intensity, frequency, and duration of heatwave events. The association between heatwaves and elderly mortality is highly researched in developed countries. In contrast, heatwave impact on hospital admissions has been insufficiently studied worldwide due to data availability and sensitivity. In our opinion, the relationship between heatwaves and hospital admissions is worthwhile to explore as it could have a profound impact on healthcare systems. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the associations between heatwaves and hospitalisations for the elderly by age group in Selangor, Malaysia, from 2010 to 2020. We further explored the impact of heatwaves on the risks of cause-specific hospital admissions across age groups within the elderly. This study applied generalized additive models (GAMs) with the Poisson family and distributed lag models (DLMs) to estimate the effect of heatwaves on hospitalisations. According to the findings, there was no significant increase in hospitalisations for those aged 60 and older during heatwaves; however, a rise in mean apparent temperature (ATmean) by 1 °C significantly increased the risk of hospital admission by 12.9%. Heatwaves had no immediate effects on hospital admissions among elderly patients, but significant delay effects were identified for ATmean with a lag of 0–3 days. The hospital admission rates of the elderly groups started declining after a 5-day average following the heatwave event. Females were found to be relatively more vulnerable than males during heatwave periods. Consequently, these results can provide a reference to improve public health strategies to target elderly people who are at the greatest risk of hospitalisations due to heatwaves. Development of early heatwave and health warning systems for the elderly would assist with preventing and reducing health risks while also minimising the burden on the whole hospital system in Selangor, Malaysia. MDPI 2023-05-22 /pmc/articles/PMC10218161/ /pubmed/37239636 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20105910 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Yong, Kun Hing
Teo, Yen Nee
Azadbakht, Mohsen
Phung, Hai
Chu, Cordia
The Scorching Truth: Investigating the Impact of Heatwaves on Selangor’s Elderly Hospitalisations
title The Scorching Truth: Investigating the Impact of Heatwaves on Selangor’s Elderly Hospitalisations
title_full The Scorching Truth: Investigating the Impact of Heatwaves on Selangor’s Elderly Hospitalisations
title_fullStr The Scorching Truth: Investigating the Impact of Heatwaves on Selangor’s Elderly Hospitalisations
title_full_unstemmed The Scorching Truth: Investigating the Impact of Heatwaves on Selangor’s Elderly Hospitalisations
title_short The Scorching Truth: Investigating the Impact of Heatwaves on Selangor’s Elderly Hospitalisations
title_sort scorching truth: investigating the impact of heatwaves on selangor’s elderly hospitalisations
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10218161/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37239636
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20105910
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