2023-05-19 03:12:23
With the rising temperatures, carbon monoxide accidents are increasingly being targeted. While in Vienna the focus is primarily on gas boilers and air conditioning units, Tyrolean doctors are now drawing attention to the danger of barbecue accidents. In the APA interview, Uwe Klingkowski and Benoit Bernar from the Department of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at the University Hospital Innsbruck appealed to the medical profession to test patients with unclear symptoms for possible CO poisoning.
“Non-specific symptoms that cannot be explained can be due to CO poisoning,” Klingkowski noted. Symptoms can be “unclear states of confusion, sudden loss of consciousness, cardiovascular problems, headaches or seizures,” said the medical director of the pediatric intensive care unit. A check with simple oxygen saturation measuring devices cannot detect CO poisoning. The carbon monoxide concentration in the body can only be reliably determined by a blood gas analysis, in which a “very small amount of blood – like a sugar test” is analyzed within a few minutes.
The treatment then takes place with a high dose of oxygen, because only an increased oxygen partial pressure displaces the carbon monoxide. Furthermore, there is the possibility of the pressure chamber, where an even higher oxygen partial pressure is possible by increasing the ambient pressure, said Klingkowski. In Austria there is a pressure chamber in Graz, but in Tyrol those affected are usually taken to Murnau in Germany. However, the fact that patients at the children’s clinic have to be cared for in intensive care is “very, very rare,” reported the doctor. According to tirol kliniken, fewer than ten people with CO poisoning as the main diagnosis were admitted to the hospitals in Innsbruck and Hall last year, but additional diagnoses are not taken into account, it said.
The reason for the appeal of the two doctors was an incident in April. A family hosted a barbecue and, due to the weather, moved it to the garage – with the door being closed during the meal. Several people were taken to the hospital with symptoms of poisoning – among them were two children and a pregnant woman. Emergency generators in closed rooms are also dangerous – as an accident in Linz in 2021 showed, in which two children died and the mother was seriously injured.
A study from Graz, in which 305 patients with CO poisoning who had been treated in the hyperbaric chamber between 2006 and 2018, was examined and found that nine percent used a charcoal grill as a source of carbon monoxide for a poisoning was responsible. The most common source was the gas boiler at 33 percent, Bernar quoted from the work.
Shisha smoking is also classified as a source of danger. “These are fired with coal and that’s enough if people smoke in tents, for example,” reported Bernar. These cases mostly concern young people, who are then also treated at the Department of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.
Carbon monoxide is a colorless and odorless gas. If it gets into the bloodstream via the lungs, it binds – to put it simply – to the red blood cells and prevents oxygen transport in the body. The organism suffocates internally without turning the lips blue. Symptoms of mild carbon monoxide poisoning include headaches, dizziness and flu-like symptoms. If such symptoms occur, the endangered area should be left immediately and the rescue and fire brigade should be notified.
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