ER doctors talk winter and snowstorm safety
Emergency rooms are heating up as this unforgiving winter continues to keep much of the country in a snowbound deep freeze.
Anyone looking for tips on how to avoid winter health hazards would do well to ask ER doctors in Massachusetts, where they've been coping with frigid temperatures and relentless blizzards. Emergency departments in the Boston area are seeing a steady stream of patients with a litany of winter injuries including frostbite, hypothermia, broken bones and joints, back injuries, lacerations and carbon monoxide poisoning.
Dr. Shane Kappler, an emergency medicine physician at Cambridge Health Alliance, says area hospitals are prepared to deal with whatever comes, despite the record snowfall. "We've already had pretty huge volumes of patients because influenza is pummeling northern Massachusetts," he told CBS News.
Kappler says he's started to write up basic winter safety advice into discharge plans. A patient who winds up in Kappler's ER with frostbite will receive detailed instructions on how to avoid amputation. "We tell people you have to dress properly, even cover areas you wouldn't think of such as the nose and ears."
Dr. Stuart Harris, chief of the division of wilderness medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, is concerned about another seasonal trend: snow blower injuries. A few years ago, Harris noticed he consistently saw about 2 to 5 patients with mangled fingers or hands after each winter storm.
"They end up down a digit or even five, even if the snow blower is off," Harris told CBS News. "It's inevitably their dominant -- usually their right hand -- that they're sticking into these things."
Harris has gone on a public health crusade and made appearances on many of Boston's local news programs to spread awareness about snow blower safety.
But even moving the snow from your driveway the old-fashioned way, with a shovel, comes with serious risk. Snow-shoveling induced cardiac arrest occurs much more frequently than you'd think. After a recent blizzard in Chicago, more than a dozen deaths were blamed on heart attacks while shoveling.
"Snow shoveling is a gym exercise, it's aerobic activity," said Kappler. "If you're not making it to the gym a few times a week now, then shoveling is going to be a large physiological stress on your body. Push the snow, don't lift it."
Some doctors recommend people over age 55 and those with heart conditions avoid snow shoveling entirely.
However, no matter how many precautions you take, this time of year simply walking down the street on an icy day can end in a trip to the ER.
Dr. Antonio Dajer, director of the emergency department at the New York-Presbyterian hospital campus in Lower Manhattan, says he's seen many serious arm and leg fractures in otherwise young and healthy patients, some of which actually required more than a cast or sling. Way too often, he says these injuries were avoidable. "Don't look at your cellphone," Dajer told CBS News. "Do not let yourself get distracted by anything. No heels. And keep your hands out. Have your hands free."
But all these warnings don't mean you have to stay housebound till spring -- just use common sense to help you weather the hazards of the season.
"The thing I've seen as an emergency doctor is that life will happen to you," said Kappler. "Sometimes you're just unlucky. A lot of things are out of your control. What I look at is trying to control everything you can within your sphere of influence. But even if you do all that there's still going to be sledding accidents and that's why emergency rooms exist."