Hospitals across Texas are treating a particularly high number of patients with heat-related illnesses after triple-digit temperatures broke records across the Dallas-Fort Worth area July 21, The Dallas Morning News reports.
On two days the week of July 15, Arlington-based Texas Health Resources treated more patients with heat-related illnesses than on any one day from the last two years.
Texas Health Resources hospitals treated 43 people with heat-related illnesses July 19 and 34 July 18, each day passing the 33 patients it treated Aug. 3, 2016.
Dallas-based Parkland Health & Hospital System has treated more than 430 patients with heat-related diagnoses in its emergency department since 2010.
"This is life-threatening heat," Fort Worth-based ambulance provider MedStar Mobile Healthcare spokesperson Matt Zavadsky told The Dallas Morning News.
MedStar paramedics, which serves Fort Worth and 14 other cities in Texas, saw an especially high number of heat-related cases as well.
Ambulances responded to 19 heat-related calls July 19, almost breaking the 2011 record of 22 calls in one day.
Fourteen of these patients were taken to area hospitals, and paramedics treated the five others at the scene. One hospitalized patient was listed in critical condition as of July 21.