Although they helped save the life of a 46-year-old man pinned beneath a train in Northeast Philadelphia more than a year ago, Einstein emergency physicians Melissa Kohn, MD, and Megan Stobart-Gallagher, DO, are still being recognized for their critical role in the man’s rescue. Drs. Kohn and Stobart-Gallagher performed an emergency amputation of the heavily sedated man’s foot, working in a cramped space under the train.

There’s nothing like cooling off in a pool, river or ocean on a hot day, but beware the dangers of diving right in.

“Hundreds of people are paralyzed each year in the United States after diving head first into a body of water,” says Jack Kelly, DO, FACEP, FAAEM, FCPP, interim chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Einstein Medical Center. “These injuries can have severe, lifelong consequences for the victim, family and friends, and most of these injuries are preventable.”

While most people know that diving in headfirst is dangerous, other safety precautions should be taken when entering a body of water.

It’s a common summer refrain: “It’s not the heat—it’s the humidity.” But is humidity alone really to blame for the discomfort of the summer months?

“It’s actually heat and humidity working together that our bodies don’t like,” says Robert Czincila, DO, chief of Emergency Medicine, Einstein Medical Center Montgomery. “High humidity, like we see in the Philadelphia region, gets in the way of the body’s ability to release heat. Combined with days or even weeks of high temperatures, this can be risky—even deadly.”

When it’s hot outside, our blood vessels circulate blood closer to the skin to help release excess heat and move water through the skin as sweat. But sweating by itself doesn’t cool the body unless it evaporates. In humid conditions, the surrounding air has an unusually high level of moisture, which prevents it from absorbing the sweat coming from our skin.

Whether it’s frozen daiquiris by the pool, martinis on the patio during happy hour, or a few cold beers after mowing the lawn, alcoholic beverages seem to perfectly complement the long, hot days of summer.

But because heat and alcohol affect the body similarly, mixing the two can be dangerous.

“Consuming alcohol outdoors in the summer heat can lead to a variety of heat-related illnesses, such as dehydration, heat cramps and potentially heat stroke,” says Robert Czincila, DO, chief of Emergency Medicine at Einstein Medical Center Montgomery. “Even worse, many people don’t realize these things are happening because they think they’re quenching their thirst.”

“Alcohol is a diuretic, which causes you to urinate more frequently and perspire more than normal,” continues Dr. Czincila. “Add that to a hot day when your body is already working hard to keep itself cool and you’re at increased risk for dehydration.”

Einstein surgeon Pak Shan Leung, MD, recently returned from a volunteer mission with Doctors Without Borders in South Sudan. He worked in the only hospital in an isolated village, lived in a one-room mud hut with no indoor plumbing, endured smothering heat that often soared above 110 degrees and was on call around the clock for five weeks.  He treated everything from infections to broken bones to traumatic wounds in the tumultuous East African nation beset by civil war.

The hardest part for him was—leaving.

“I was happy to come home because I missed my friends and colleagues,” said Dr. Leung (pictured here in the left of the photo), “but it was difficult to leave the hospital and country knowing there’s so much work that has to be done.”

Dr. Leung, 36, associate chair of the Division of Trauma and Surgical Critical Care at Einstein Healthcare Network, chose to go to the Agok region in South Sudan for his first overseas mission precisely because the need was so great.

It takes only seconds for hot water to cause a third-degree burn.

Each year, more than 500,000 scald burns occur in the United States, according to the Burn Foundation. To avoid scalding, keep the temperature on your water heater set no higher than 120˚F. And never leave young children unattended in the bathroom, near a sink or in the bathtub.

What Is a Scald?

Skin burned by boiling water is said to be scalded. When the skin is scalded, tissue and cells are damaged and liquids may ooze from the skin to replace lost fluids. In severe cases, you can go into shock from loss of fluids.

It wasn’t exactly business as usual for Melissa Kohn, MD, attending physician in the Department of Emergency Medicine, Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia and Elkins Park.

A man was pinned under a rail car in Northeast Philadelphia one night last July. Working with fellow attending physician Megan Stobart-Gallagher, DO, she performed an emergency amputation on one of the man’s feet. The doctors’ working space was incredibly tight. Both had to crawl on hands and knees to get to the victim, and once under the rail car, there was so little room, they needed to squat. Their helmets bumped up against the bottom of the car. Temperatures under the rail car were over 100 degrees.

It’s a story Dr. Kohn has related to news reporters over and over again, and you can understand why they were so interested. Einstein emergency physicians attend to difficult trauma cases all the time, but the rail car rescue was especially dramatic.

No matter how long and dreadful Philly winters seem to have become, chances are pretty good that the time for snow shoveling injuries is over.

OK, seriously, now is the time for illnesses and injuries that are far more typically associated with warm weather than cold weather.

“As winter turns into spring, we see illnesses like acute asthma exacerbation triggered by allergies,” says emergency physician Maria Halluska-Handy, MD, medical director of Einstein Medical Center Elkins Park. “Later on, we’ll see heat-related illnesses. This is also the time of year where we might see people who were at the same event come down with food-related illnesses.”

Bites and stings from other insects also might prompt a visit to the emergency room—and for people with severe allergies to insect stings, they can be a life-threatening emergency.

What types of warm-weather illnesses or injuries merit a trip to the emergency department? How can you avoid them?