The Lancet Planetary Health, May 2024
Effect of heatwaves on daily hospital admissions in Portugal, 2000–18: an observational study
Climate change has increased the frequency, intensity, and duration of heatwaves, posing a serious threat to public health. Although the link between high temperatures and premature mortality has been extensively studied, the comprehensive quantification of heatwave effects on morbidity remains underexplored.
In this observational study, we assessed the relationship between heatwaves and daily hospital admissions at a county level in Portugal. We considered all major diagnostic categories and age groups (<18 years, 18–64 years, and ≥65 years), over a 19-year period from 2000 to 2018, during the extended summer season, defined as May 1, to Sept 30. We did a comprehensive geospatial analysis, integrating over 12 million hospital admission records with heatwave events indexed by the Excess Heat Factor (EHF), covering all 278 mainland counties. We obtained data from the Hospital Morbidity Database and E-OBS daily gridded meteorological data for Europe from 1950 to present derived from in-situ observations. To estimate the effect of heatwaves on hospital admissions, we applied negative binomial regression models at both national and county levels.