Home > National > Social Affairs

Cold brings illness, injury to the elderly

Published: 14 Jan. 2010, 20:42

Many elderly people across the country have injured themselves due to the prolonged cold spell that has gripped the nation.

Recent heavy snowfall and the long-lasting temperatures below freezing have kept ice on the ground. That, in turn, has caused people to fall, filling hospitals with dozens of victims.

Seoul experienced an average temperature between Dec. 21 and Wednesday of minus 5.7 degrees Celsius (21.7 degrees Fahrenheit), the coldest in 25 years. The mercury in the same period in 1984 and the following year was at minus 5.8 degrees Celsius. The yearly average for that period is minus 1.6 degrees.

Seran Hospital in Jongno, central Seoul, has been seeing more and more elderly patients getting treatment for joint fractures since December.

Kim Eun-jin, a public relations employee at Seran, said that senior citizens’ joints are vulnerable to cold weather and that the hospital has been busy taking care of a surging number of aged patients.

A man in his 50s fractured his pelvis and hip after falling from a horse in Anseong, Gyeonggi, on Saturday after the horse slipped on an icy road. However, he was not able to find a bed at nearby hospitals because most were already full. Eventually, he traveled all the way to Seoul to get surgery at a general hospital.

Neurologist Kim Jong-seong at the Asan Medical Center in eastern Seoul said that when senior citizens are exposed to cold wind, their blood vessels contract and eventually their blood pressure rises. That is why the number of patients with strokes increases by 20 percent in the winter.

“Even high blood pressure patients who have been treated with medication have to take more drugs in the winter,” said Kim.

The center said there were 109 patients suffering from stroke last October. The figure surged to 122 in December. Experts say that the number of patients with cardiac infarction and other heart diseases also increases because of the cold. “When the average temperature goes down by 1 degree, the number of patients suffering from cardiac infarction increases 0.8 percent,” said Kwon Hyeon-cheol, a cardiologist at Samsung Medical Center in Gangnam, southern Seoul. “The thermometer reads an average of around 20 degrees during the fall season. But in case of a sustained cold spell like now, when it’s around minus 10 degrees Celsius, the number of such patients rises by 20 to 30 percent.”

By Lee Min-yong [[email protected]]