When the temperature heats up, so do emergency rooms, according to a massive study of Chicago hospital and urgent care records, which found increased accidental gunshot wounds, kidney complaints, skin problems, varicose veins and even mental health issues related to marijuana use.
Northwestern University medical school researchers pored through records of 916,404 visits to hospital emergency rooms and urgent care centers in Chicago from 2011 to 2023 to see if they could spot trends in illnesses and injuries when the temperature hits 92.6 degrees (33.7 degrees Celsius) or higher. They found when it gets hot, more than a dozen broad categories of injuries and illness become more frequent, including some that most people don't associate with heat, according to the study in Wednesday's Science Advances.
