Heat, emergency room visits increase by up to 20%

Emergency rooms are increasingly crowded from the North to the South of Italy due to the heat emergency of the last few days: "The number of visits to first aid points is increasing and we are currently recording a 5 to 20% increase in entries", the president of the Italian Society of Emergency Medicine (Simeu), Alessandro Riccardi, told ANSA. Greater crowding is observed in the emergency rooms of the hottest cities and also in tourist areas. "We are recording a high percentage of illnesses in people with multiple pathologies, in chronic patients or among the elderly, because in these subjects heat waves can aggravate pre-existing pathologies and lead to acute manifestations", he explains. In general, explains Riccardi, "the illnesses directly linked to high temperatures, such as sunstroke, heat stroke and syncope, are present but not in very large numbers". In the cities, concludes the Simeu president, "the situation requires greater monitoring since the impact on access to emergency rooms is greater, also because in several cases the perceived temperature is even higher than the real one".