Last week's heat wave has subsided, but it appears to have left a mark.
Hamilton County Public Health reports 171 people visited Southwest Ohio emergency departments for heat-related illnesses. That’s compared with 13 the week before.
Medical Director Dr. Stephen Feagins says those emergencies usually happen with a combination of heat and humidity that makes it difficult for the body to shed heat.
“The first thing that happens is the body tries to shunt blood away from the inside, like the intestines and things like that to the skin,” he says. “One of the first symptoms are GI (gastro-intestinal) symptoms.”
Feagins says it’s important to stay hydrated, but, if you feel sick after drinking water, that's a sign something's wrong.
He says while heat exhaustion can make you sick, heat stroke can lead to death.
Hamilton County's coroner's office is investigating whether any of the deaths from last week are heat-related, but that determination could take some time.
What to do if you feel sick in the heat
Feagins says the first thing to do to treat heat illness is to get out of the heat and humidity. “You can’t treat heat-illness in the heat,” he says.
Public libraries, recreation centers and some YMCA branches in the Tri-State serve as free cooling centers during official heat advisories.
Treatment for heat stroke can also include immersion in cold water.
“Getting into ice-cold water is the most rapid way of decreasing core temperature,” Feagins previously told WVXU. “There are other ways, of course — IV fluids, things like that — but those require expertise or health care workers. Getting into an ice-cold bath requires no expertise, just having an ice-cold bath.”
According to the Health Collaborative, over the July Fourth weekend, emergency services in Cincinnati did not report any mass casualty events or big fires. But the Cincinnati Emergency Communications Center handled an influx of approximately 4,000 calls related to heat, crashes and illegal firework usage.
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