When temperatures climb into the 90s, most people think about dehydration, heat exhaustion, or heatstroke. But a large study suggests the health effects of extreme heat can appear in places doctors may not immediately associate with temperature.
Researchers at Northwestern University examined 916,404 emergency department and urgent-care visits involving 372,140 adults in Chicago between 2011 and 2023. Instead of starting with a short list of conditions already suspected to be heat-related, they searched across 1,803 diagnosis codes to see which medical problems became more common during unusually hot weather.
