Article Text
PDF
Abstract
Background Extreme temperatures are triggering and exacerbating hospital admissions and health burdens; however, it is still understudied. Therefore, we evaluated the effects of the average temperature on overall hospitalisation and the average length of hospital stay.
Methods Daily area-specific age-sex stratified hospitalisation records from 2006 to 2020 were collected from the National Health Research Institutes of Taiwan. The distributed lag non-linear model was used to estimate the area-specific relative risk (RR) and 95% CI associated with daily average temperature. Overall cumulative RR was pooled from area-specific RRs using random effects meta-analysis. Temperature effects of extreme high and low thresholds were also evaluated based on the 99th (32°C) and 5th (14°C) percentiles, respectively.
Results Our findings suggested that the elderly (age ≥65 years) are vulnerable to temperature effects, while differential gender effects are not explicit in Taiwan. A higher risk of in-patient visits was seen among the elderly during extreme low temperatures (RR 1.08; 95% CI 1.04 to 1.11) compared with extreme high temperatures (RR 1.07; 95% CI 1.05 to 1.10). Overall, high-temperature extremes increased the risk of hospitalisation with an RR of 1.05 (95% CI 1.03 to 1.07) among the all-age-sex population in Taiwan. Additionally, lag-specific analysis of the study revealed that high-temperature effects on in-patient visits are effective on the same day of exposure, while cold effects occurred after 0–2 days of exposure. The average length of hospital stays can also increase with high-temperature extremes among age group 41–64 years and the elderly.
Conclusion Public health preparedness should consider the increased load on health facilities and health expenditures during extreme temperatures.
- AGING
- BIOSTATISTICS
- CLIMATE CHANGE
- ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH
Data availability statement
No data are available. Data used is confidential and is not available due to privacy concerns.
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Data availability statement
No data are available. Data used is confidential and is not available due to privacy concerns.
Footnotes
Contributors AS, Y-CW and LD: conceptualisation; LD: data curation; Y-CW: funding acquisition; AS and LD. Formal analysis; AS: writing—original draft; AS, LD and Y-CW: writing—review and editing. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript and Y-CW takes the full responsibility the overall content and acts as guarantor.
Funding We are highly grateful to the Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) for their financial support (MOST 109-2621-M-033-001-MY3, MOST 109-2625-M-033-002 and MOST 110-2625-M-033-002). In addition, we are also thankful to Academia Sinica (AS-SS-111-03) for their financial support.
Map disclaimer The depiction of boundaries on this map does not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of BMJ (or any member of its group) concerning the legal status of any country, territory, jurisdiction or area or of its authorities. This map is provided without any warranty of any kind, either express or implied.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.