[Association between ambient temperature and hospital emergency room visits for cardiovascular diseases: a...

To explore the association between ambient average temperature and hospital emergency room visits for cardiovascular diseases (International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Vision ICD-10: I00 - I99) in Beijing, China.

Data was collected on daily hospital emergency room visits for cardiovascular diseases from Peking University Third Hospital, including meteorological data (daily average temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and atmospheric pressure) from the China Meteorological Data Sharing Service System, and on air pollution from the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center. Time-stratified case-crossover design was used to analyze data on 4 seasons.

After adjusting data on air pollution, 1 degree ( degrees C) increase of ambient average temperature would associate with the emergency room visits of odds ratio (ORs) as 1.282 (95%CI: 1.250 - 1.315), 1.027 (95%CI: 1.001 - 1.055), 0.661 (95%CI: 0.637 - 0.687), and 0.960 (95%CI: 0.937 - 0.984) in spring, summer, autumn, and winter respectively. After controlling the influence of relative humidity, wind speed, and atmospheric pressure, 1 degrees C increase in the ambient average temperature would be associated with the emergency room visits on ORs value as 1.423 (95%CI: 1.377 - 1.471), 1.082 (95%CI: 1.041 - 1.124), 0.633 (95%CI: 0.607 - 0.660) and 0.971 (95%CI: 0.944 - 1.000) in spring, summer, autumn, and winter respectively.

These data on outcomes suggested that the elevated level of ambient temperature would increase the hospital emergency room visits for cardiovascular diseases in spring and summer while the elevated level of ambient temperature would decrease the hospital emergency room visits for the cardiovascular diseases in autumn and winter, suggesting that patients with cardiovascular diseases should pay attention to the climate change.