87th AMS Annual Meeting

Monday, 15 January 2007
Bioclimatological aspects of sudden cardiovascular death cases
Exhibit Hall C (Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center)
Rita Pongracz, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary; and J. Bartholy, Z. Kis, K. Toro, G. Dunai, N. Szlavik, and E. Keller
In Hungary, the rate of sudden death is traditionally high comparing to other EU countries, however, the clear evidence of this phenomenon has not clarified yet. The urban environment of large agglomerations considerably modifies the stress-level of the inhabitants, which may result in increase of the number of sudden death cases. In addition, the effect of more frequent extreme climate events may be also an important factor of human mortality. The main objectives of our research include the clarification and description of the possible relationship between the incidences of sudden cardiovascular death happened in Budapest (Hungary) and various meteorological parameters (e.g., frontal activities, heat waves, cold events, etc.). Detailed time series of these death cases have been collected and compiled for the period of 1995-2004 based on autopsy reports of the Department of Forensic Medicine, Semmelweis University. Meteorological conditions during these sudden cases have been also collected from the ECMWF ERA-40 datasets, and the observations of urban meteorological station installed at the Department of Meteorology, Eötvös Loránd University. The evaluated meteorological parameters include temperature (2 m, AT-850 hPa), dew point temperature, relative humidity, air pressure, wind and global radiation. The most important meteorological variables have been selected on the base of detailed statistical uni-, bi- and multivariate analysis. The entire database have been separated to several subsets by gender, age, specific cause of the sudden death, and detailed analysis have been accomplished on annual and seasonal scales.

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