It has been difficult to avoid the term polar vortex this week, as an aberration in Arctic winds led to much of the country experiencing dangerously low temperatures. Though Philadelphia escaped the worst this phenomena had to offer, temperatures in the city still dropped to their lowest point in several decades.
Aside from being an inconvenience, temperatures that low create serious health concerns. Local news outlets peppered each day's coverage with stories about how to stay safe, how the city was reacting and how medical systems were handling the situation. Penn Medicine physicians were quoted in a multitude of these stories, which we've collected below.
Late last week, CBS Philadelphia reported on the dangerously cold temperatures for the Eagles' game this past Saturday night, advising fans to bundle up — and know the signs of hypothermia and frostbite.
"Early hypothermia starts when you stop shivering. Our natural response to the body temperature starting to drop is that we shiver and generate our own heat," said Peter Sananman, MD, assistant professor of Clinical Emergency Medicine. He added hypothermia can cause mental confusion and a loss of coordination.
Sananman also noted, on frostbite: "You actually develop tissue damage and your skin can freeze. Once that happens you can have real serious permanent damage. You can lose a finger, the tip of your nose from that."
On Monday, WHYY Newsworks listed five ways that the extreme cold can affect human physiology. Tejvir Khurana, PhD, professor of Physiology, and a member of the Pennsylvania Muscle Institute, was quoted as saying the head is "a huge heat-loss source," adding this is something people often forget.
"A proper hat and head gear is extremely useful," he said in the article. "The face, the tip of the nose, and ear tips are vulnerable in the cold."
Khurana, who practices mountaineering on the side, added hypothermia should be a concern even outside of record-setting cold: "You can get hypothermia in 50 degrees," he cautioned. "The wet and wind conditions are the two things to worry about along with the cold."
Stories on Monday and Tuesday also shed light on how Penn Medicine and the City of Philadelphia were working to help the city's homeless during the cold snap.
In Monday's story, 6ABC reported on how the City of Philadelphia is trying to help keep people warm and off the streets to avoid hypothermia and frostbite.
"It doesn't take very long for frostbite to happen at all, and things to expect are very cold fingers, you can have numbness, tingling pain, swelling of your fingertips, in your hands or another exposed body part," Maria Aini, MD, assistant professor of Clinical Emergency Medicine, said in the article.
Tuesday's story focused on Helena Boyle and Sarah Sterling, from Pennsylvania Hospital’s Hall-Mercer Homeless Outreach Service — part of a network of hospitals and non-profits that help people outside during a Code Blue, when temperatures in the city dip dangerously low. Reporter Kenneth Moton joined the team as they searched for homeless to help get them food, warmer clothing or transport to shelters throughout the city.
Staff like Boyle and Sterling are frequently assigned to respond to calls for the homeless in the Center City area, but also work outside the perimeter of Center City. When they aren’t receiving response calls, team members are on the street engaging homeless people. During a Code Blue, they are staffed from 8 a.m. to midnight, Monday through Friday, and 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekends — every day of the year. The dedicated outreach workers work in 8-hour shifts and typically make contact with about 10 to 15 homeless people a night.
Also on Tuesday, KYW Newsradio reported that emergency room personnel were seeing an upsurge in activity related to the bitterly cold weather.
Peter Sanaman, MD, was quoted in the article, and noted the increase in activity was not just the ice-related slips and falls you might expect.
"People who are homeless, or indigent in some way, who are more exposed to the elements and don’t have places to go, will come in for other complaints — chest pain, a rash, something they might not otherwise have come in for — to seek warmth and food and the shelter in the department,” he said.