Effects of Environmental Changes on Emergency Rooms Visits for Adult Sickle Cell Disease

Background:

Acute pain crises from vaso occlusive episodes are major cause of morbidity, hospitalization and emergency room visits for patients with sickle cell disease. Major causes of acute painful crises have been attributed to dehydration, infections and fever. Weather change has also been attributed as one of the major cause of acute pain crises by physicians and patients. Data on effects of environmental changes on acute pain crises in patients with sickle cell disease is mixed. Here we report our investigation to see if number of emergency room visits for adult patients with SCD were associated with environmental changes.

Method:

At our hematology clinic we take care of around 300 adult patients with SCD and we have on average around 11,000 emergency room visit per years from these patients. Electronically from EHR (Electronic health Record), we pulled out data on number of emergency room visit every day for adult patient with SCD in year 2015.We also gathered data on daily environmental changes from a national weather website for the year 2015 and collected data on daily temperature changes, humidity and precipitation/rain in our area. We did analysis to see if there was any correlation between the weather changes and emergency room visit.

Results:

As shown in graphs below, there was no correlation between the number of ER visits and weather changes in adult patient with SCD.

Conclusion:

Our analysis showed that there was no correlation between number of ER visit for adult patient with SCD and weather changes like -temperature, humidity and precipitation/rain.

ER Visits and Precipitation

ER visits, temperature and humidity

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