North Texas children experience an increase in emergency heat-related illnesses
Krystal Jackson ensures her daughter Mia gets a balance of time in the great outdoors and out of the blazing heat. Walking the line, she said, is challenging.
"It's very hard to balance that, especially when it doesn't get dark until 8:30 at night," Jackson said. "Her bedtime's right around the corner."
Jackson and her husband plan their 7-year-old's outdoor activities in the morning or late in the evening. Additionally, they offer aquatic or water-based recreation so Mia can cool off. Over the past couple of days, she needed it, as temperatures reached 100 degrees or more.
"It's been brutal," Jackson said.
A scare before summer break
The parents have been keeping a close eye on their daughter since she fell ill before school ended. Jackson said her daughter's school called her because Mia had overheated.
"She kept crying," Jackson said. "I think the sun just messed with her because it's never happened (before). And that's what she kept saying, I'm so hot, I'm so hot."
Mia cooled off; however, some children require emergency care. UT Southwestern Medical Center's Dr. Taylor Merritt knows that very well.
Tracking a troubling trend
As a third-year pediatric resident, Merritt said a football player with a heat-related ailment sparked her curiosity about children and heat-related illnesses.
"It really made me wonder if this is something we see every summer, if it's getting worse, what those trends look like, and that's kind of where the study started," Merritt said.
UT Southwestern is a pediatric partner of Children's Health. Merritt examined emergency data already recorded from the hospital system's Dallas and Plano campuses over the past decade, from May through September. The results are published in Academic Pediatrics.
"So from 2012 to 2023, we saw a 170% increase in the number of heat-related illnesses coming to our emergency department in the Dallas area," she said.
From cramps to life-threatening conditions
The illnesses varied. Patients faced heat cramps, heat exhaustion, heat syncope—when the body overheats, causing blood pressure to drop—heat stroke, and rhabdomyolysis, a condition in which toxic particles from the muscle break down and enter the circulatory system. Children of all ages, she said, are at risk.
Study leader Dr. Andrew Yu, an assistant professor of pediatrics and director of the Pediatric Residency Program at UT Southwestern, as well as a pediatrician at Children's Health, said the information should be taken seriously by parents, coaches and athletes.
"We do sort of recommend that they take a period to get acclimated to the heat. That they stay hydrated," Yu said. "And to pay attention to signs and warning signs from your body as well too."
A message for parents
The impact of heat-related emergency care affected all ages. Those who are too young to fend for themselves in hot vehicles may not survive, Merritt said.
Mia's mother, Krystal Jackson, said every parent has to do what works for them. She believes children need to experience the outside without the consequences.
"It's hot. It's very hot," Jackson said. "And it's not fair to them."