Effects of Weather and Heliophysical Conditions on Emergency Ambulance Calls for Elevated Arterial Blood Pressure

Jone Vencloviene, Ruta M. Babarskiene, Paulius Dobozinskas, Gintare Sakalyte, Kristina Lopatiene and Nerijus Mikelionis
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Jone Vencloviene: Department of Environmental Sciences, Vytautas Magnus University, Donelaicio St. 58, Kaunas 44248, Lithuania
Ruta M. Babarskiene: Department of Cardiology, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Eiveniu Str. 2, Kaunas LT-50028, Lithuania
Paulius Dobozinskas: Department of Disaster Medicine, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Eiveniu Str. 4, Kaunas LT-50028, Lithuania
Gintare Sakalyte: Department of Cardiology, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Eiveniu Str. 2, Kaunas LT-50028, Lithuania
Kristina Lopatiene: Department of Orthodontics, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Luksos-Daumanto Str. 6, Kaunas LT-50106, Lithuania
Nerijus Mikelionis: Kaunas Emergency Medical Service Station, KaunasLT-51271, Lithuania

IJERPH, 2015, vol. 12, issue 3, 1-17

Abstract: We hypothesized that weather and space weather conditions were associated with the exacerbation of essential hypertension. The study was conducted during 2009–2010 in the city of Kaunas, Lithuania. We analyzed 13,475 cards from emergency ambulance calls (EACs), in which the conditions for the emergency calls were made coded I.10–I.15. The Kaunas Weather Station provided daily records of air temperature (T), wind speed (WS), relative humidity, and barometric pressure (BP). We evaluated the associations between daily weather variables and daily number of EACs by applying a multivariate Poisson regression. Unfavorable heliophysical conditions (two days after the active-stormy geomagnetic field or the days with solar WS > 600 km/s) increased the daily number of elevated arterial blood pressure (EABP) by 12% (RR = 1.12; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.04–1.21); and WS ? 3.5 knots during days of T < 1.5 °C and T ? 12.5 °C by 8% (RR = 1.08; CI 1.04–1.12). An increase of T by 10 °C and an elevation of BP two days after by 10 hPa were associated with a decrease in RR by 3%. An additional effect of T was detected during days of T ? 17.5 °C only in females. Women and patients with grade III arterial hypertension at the time of the ambulance call were more sensitive to weather conditions. These results may help in the understanding of the population’s sensitivity to different weather conditions.

Keywords: emergency ambulance calls; arterial blood pressure; weather; risk (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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