Heat, Heatwaves and Cardiorespiratory Hospital Admissions in Helsinki, Finland

Abstract

Background: There is a lack of knowledge concerning the effects of ambient heat exposure on morbidity in Northern Europe. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the relationships of daily summertime temperature and heatwaves with cardiorespiratory hospital admissions in the Helsinki metropolitan area, Finland. Methods: Time series models adjusted for potential confounders, such as air pollution, were used to investigate the associations of daily temperature and heatwaves with cause-specific cardiorespiratory hospital admissions during summer months of 2001–2017. Daily number of hospitalizations was obtained from the national hospital discharge register and weather information from the Finnish Meteorological Institute. Results: Increased daily temperature was associated with a decreased risk of total respiratory hospital admissions and asthma. Heatwave days were associated with 20.5% (95% CI: 6.9, 35.9) increased risk of pneumonia admissions and during long or intense heatwaves also with total respiratory admissions in the oldest age group (≥75 years). There were also suggestive positive associations between heatwave days and admissions due to myocardial infarction and cerebrovascular diseases. In contrast, risk of arrhythmia admissions decreased 20.8% (95% CI: 8.0, 31.8) during heatwaves. Conclusions: Heatwaves, rather than single hot days, are a health threat affecting morbidity even in a Northern climate.

High Temperatures and Cardiovascular-Related Morbidity: A Scoping Review

“…Four of the five systematic reviews also completed meta-analysis [ 16 , 23 , 24 , 25 ]. Of the remaining 17 studies, the majority utilized either a case-crossover design with conditional logistic regression [ 26 , 27 , 28 ], time series analysis utilizing Poisson regression [ 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 ], distributed lag nonlinear models [ 35 ], or generalized additive models [ 36 ]. Poisson regression and generalized linear regression [ 37 , 38 ], multiple stepwise regression analysis [ 39 ], canonical correlation analysis [ 40 ], and t -test [ 41 , 42 ] were also conducted.…”

“…The five systematic reviews included studies from North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Single studies were conducted in the United States [ 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 33 , 40 , 41 ], Canada [ 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 ], Southern Europe [ 31 , 38 , 39 ], Northern Europe [ 30 , 32 ], and Eastern Europe [ 42 ].…”

Associations between Weather, Air Quality and Moderate Extreme Cancer-Related Mortality Events in Augsburg, Southern Germany

“…To account for trends and seasonality, each meteorological and air-quality-related variable firstly underwent a detrending process. A variety of methods for detrending exist [25][26][27]. We followed an approach in accordance with Iler et al [28] and applied a simple linear regression to each variable.…”

Combining socio-economic and climate projections to assess heat risk

“…Marsha et al 2016;Mora et al 2017;Chen et al 2017;Botzen et al 2020) are projected to increase. In addition to increased mortality, heat causes a wide range of direct adverse impacts on human health, including impacts on cardio-vascular (Sohail et al 2020), mental (Palinkas and Wong 2020), occupational (Kjellstrom et al 2016), and maternal (Kuehn and McCormick 2017) health.…”

“…We project heat-related risks for Finland by combining all SSPs with three RCPs. Despite its northerly location, there has been a significant level of heat-related mortality and morbidity in Finland (Ruuhela et al 2018(Ruuhela et al , 2021Kollanus et al 2019;Sohail et al 2020), and the ageing population faces increased vulnerability and heat-related risks (Carter et al 2016). We develop a methodology to project future vulnerability and risk at the postal code area scale (mean area 112 km 2 ).…”