1. Climate change, global warming, and intensive care.
- Author
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Bein, Thomas, Karagiannidis, Christian, and Quintel, Michael
- Subjects
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CLIMATE change , *GLOBAL warming , *CRITICAL care medicine , *CLIMATE change & health , *CLIMATE change mitigation , *HEAT stroke - Abstract
In the last five decades, human activities have resulted in the release of increasing quantities of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, thus contributing to global climate change by additional heating of the atmosphere. In consequence, in future, the European intensivist - who already should be aware of uncommon vector-borne diseases due to global tourism - must be further sensitized to presently uncommon or tropical mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue, or other vector-borne viral, fungal, or bacterial transmissions like coccidioidomycosis or avian influenza. It seems that a rise in mortality, emergency room visits, and (intensive care) hospitalization due to cardiopulmonary diseases attendant on heat stress, extreme weather conditions, or air pollution are more certain than worst-case horror scenarios. It has been shown that acute and intensive care services vary substantially across economic regions, in high-income as well as in low-income countries [[17]], and it is debatable whether the current structure of intensive care is yet armed for needs related to climate change. [Extracted from the article]
- Published
- 2020
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