Cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and heatwaves
Citation: Cheng J, Xu Z, Bambrick H, et al. Cardiorespiratory effects of heatwaves: A systematic review and meta-analysis of global epidemiological evidence. Environmental Research. 2019;177:108610.
What is this? Climate change is leading to an increased frequency and severity of heatwaves, causing adverse health effects, including for cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.
In this systematic review, the authors searched for studies of the effects of heatwaves on morbidity and mortality from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. They restricted their searches to articles published in English and did the search in November 2018. They included 54 studies from 20 countries, which investigated cardiovascular morbidity (22 studies), cardiovascular mortality (36), respiratory morbidity (20) and respiratory mortality (27).
What was found: Heatwaves were associated with increased risk of cardiovascular and respiratory mortality; but the effects on cardiovascular and respiratory morbidity were less clear.
Heatwaves are more likely to lead to cardiovascular and respiratory mortality in the elderly and people with ischemic heart disease, stroke, heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).