Western Journal of Emergency Medicine: Integrating Emergency Care with Population Health

Introduction: Global temperatures are increasing because of climate change, affecting human health. Elevated ambient temperature has been shown to increase rates of trauma presentations in emergency departments and to increase antisocial behavior, such as violent crime. To better understand how to reduce the burden on trauma hospitals, we must better understand the relationship between ambient temperature, trauma patients, and intentional injury. We sought to examine the relationship between trauma rates and minimum and maximum daily temperatures and assess whether the assault trauma mechanism had the strongest association between weather and trauma rates.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study of full and partial trauma team activations that presented to a Level I trauma center in New York from 2012 to 2019, inclusive. Daily maximum and minimum temperatures were divided into quintile ranges. Traumas were classified by injury type and mechanism as either unintentional, assault, or intentional self-harm. We used generalized linear models with a Poisson distribution to examine the relationship between maximum and minimum temperature ranges and trauma rates, controlling for precipitation.

Results: Increasing daily minimum and maximum temperatures positively correlated with increasing trauma activations. While all trauma types increased with increasing temperature, assault traumas showed the highest rate of increase (P < .001). Compared to the lowest temperature quintile (< 46 °F), the two highest maximum temperature quintiles (> 73 °F and 83 °F) showed an increase in assault rates of 83% and 65% (incident rate ratio 1.83 [95% CI, 1.46–2.29] and 1.65 [95% CI, 1.32–2.07], respectively).

Conclusion: Trauma rates have a positive association with increasing ambient temperature rates. This temperature effect is largest among the assault group, suggesting that as temperatures continue to increase, so too will traumas that are the result of interpersonal violence.