To Treat Extreme Heat, Ice-Packed Body Bags and Wet Gowns

This summer’s extreme heat is sending waves of nauseous, dizzy and sometimes comatose patients to hospitals.

Among the treatments: placing the heat sick in body bags packed with ice to rapidly lower their temperatures.

At Memorial Hermann’s flagship hospital in Houston, doctors using the body-bag treatment called in cafeteria workers to deliver five-gallon buckets of ice, said emergency physician Dr. Samuel Prater. 

“I wish this would stop,” said Dr. Frank LoVecchio, a physician at Valleywise Health Medical Center in Phoenix, which deploys the ice-packed body bags as an emergency treatment for patients who overheat so much they arrive comatose.

Temperatures around Valleywise have hit at least 110 degrees Fahrenheit daily for more than two weeks.

People suffering from the extreme heat can arrive at hospitals with symptoms such as cramps, nausea and fatigue. Body temperatures of about 104 degrees or higher can also lead to a potentially fatal condition known as heat stroke, which can cause hallucinations and organ damage or failure. 

Heat-related deaths have climbed each of the past three years, reaching 1,708 in 2022, the most recent provisional figures from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show. 

For patients with life-threatening body temperatures, LoVecchio said Valleywise doctors employ the ice baths as well as fans. The hospital also gives medicines to the comatose to keep them in a coma, which protects their brains.

Patients who are dehydrated because of the heat are at risk of seizures if they don’t have the right balance of electrolytes, such as sodium, potassium and calcium, which help the muscles, brain and other parts function.

At Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, some severely dehydrated patients lost 8 to 10 pounds in water weight by the time they arrived at the hospital, said Dr. John Garrett, its chief of emergency medicine. 

Doctors hook dehydrated patients up to intravenous lines to restore water and electrolytes, Garrett said.

In Albuquerque, N.M., doctors at Presbyterian Hospital place patients before fans in wet clothes or gowns to help reduce high body temperatures, said John Lissoway, assistant medical director for the hospital’s emergency department. 

Air moving over the damp material helps cool patients as moisture evaporates, he said.

Kayla Stack, a paramedic for the Emergency Medical Services Authority in Tulsa, Okla., said crews keep ambulances running to keep the air conditioning on, and try to move quickly to put people in the cool vehicles to reduce body temperatures. 

Stack, who works nights, said temperatures are so high that people are getting overheated even during the night. “The Oklahoma heat is undefeated against those who are unprepared and who don’t take it seriously,” said Adam Paluka, the authority’s spokesman.

To prepare for extreme heat, Providence Swedish in Seattle created a heat-alert system after the fatal 2021 heat wave across the Pacific Northwest. 

The system tied alerts to heat-related warnings from the National Weather Service and detailed steps staff should take such as stocking up on ice and other supplies needed to take care of heat patients.

HCA Healthcare last week had at least six emergency generators on standby for its 46 hospitals in Texas should the heat overtax the power grid in the state. Last month, the company moved two backup generators to the Houston and San Antonio areas. 

Write to Melanie Evans at [email protected]