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Trauma, the moon and the weather!
Researchers from the Netherlands make some interesting conclusions about the influence of the moon and the weather on the incidence of trauma. Data were extracted from the daily trauma database of patients treated at the emergency department of the Groningen Region over an impressive 36 years (between 1970 and 2005). For each patient, age, sex and cause of injury were recorded. This was compared with daily meteorological data including temperature, sunshine, humidity, air pressure, and wind as well as the lunar phase. The results implied that better weather conditions contribute to an increased rate of trauma compared with ‘normal weather’. The researchers also found that a full moon was associated with a slightly lower incidence of trauma compared with new moon (J Trauma 2009;67:1103–8).
Pre-hospital doctors and cardiac arrest
Survival after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest was no different for patients treated by doctor-manned ambulances (232 patients) and paramedic-manned ambulances (741 patients) over a 5-year period in the Oslo emergency medical service system in Norway. Despite better CPR quality and better positive prognostic factors (more bystander witnessed arrests and …