The influence of Meteorological factors on health emergencies in Buenos Aires

RUSTICUCCI, MATILDE; BETTOLLI, MARÍA LAURA; HARRIS, MARÍA DE LOS ANGELES

Sydney, Australia

Congreso; International Congress of Biometeorology and International Conference on Urban Climatology; 1999

International Society of Biometeorology

In this paper, we aim to classify the relationship between emergencies and weather types by presenting the summer and winter cases of patients that assist to the emergency room of a hospital located in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The hospital data have been sorted in 7 different diagnostic groups as follows: 1) Respirators, cardiovascular and thorax-pain illnesses; 2) Digestive, genitourinary and abdominal illnesses; 3) Neurological and psychopathological disorders; 4) Infections; 5) Contusion and crushing, bone and muscles; 6) Skin and allergies and 7) Miscellaneous. In summer, the linear correlation between the daily mean values of all meteorological variables and the total emergency assistance, shows significant positive coefficients for group 6) with the temperature and the dew-point temperature while negative with sea level pressure. Both groups 1) and 2) show significant coefficient values with the wind direction with westerly and easterly winds, respectively. It could be enhanced also that in general maximum biometeorological index value accompanies or advances a maximum of assistance. As the extra-meteorological factors are desirable to be removed from assistance data, the weekly wave, which appears in the data, is filtered out for every group, by extracting the mean weekly wave of each group. These 7-dy waves present different phases among groups. Every anomalies of assistance-group has been also correlated with the weather parameters. The major correlation coefficients are encountered between group 6) and some meteorological variables. A maximum on temperature advances 2 days to a maximum of group 6 assistance, air pressure 4 days, and dew-point temperature one day. The wind intensity advantages 2 days group 2) and strong events one day on group 3). We look towards a deeper characterization of the intra-daily weather behaviour and its possible influence upon the hospital-room assistance