Hospital advises how to deal with heat related injuries
YUMA, Ariz. (KYMA, KECY) - With the area under a continued Excessive Heat Warning, a local doctor is expecting more people to experience heat related injuries.
"It depends on what you touch, how hot it is, and how long you touch it for," said YRMC ER doctor Casey Noroyan. "We can see ranging from like I said no burn to a sunburn to a severe full thickness burn of the skin that can cause permanent damage."
Local hospitals and clinics are seeing people come in with burns from touching extremely hot surfaces like asphalt or cement.
Rural Metro says heat burns affect field and construction crews who are outside working or older community members who fall on hot pavement.
One YRMC doctor suggests for locals to be more vigilant when planning walks and running errands and try for the early morning when temperatures are mild. They say to always have shoes on your feet when walking outside to avoid burns on the bottom of your feet.
If you do experience severe blistering heat burns, doctors say you should avoid applying creams or lotions to the open skin and visit the doctors.
"Ice can definitely help bring down some of the inflammation and some of the pain, but you never want to put ice directly on the burn," said Dr. Noroyan. "You do want to have some sort of towel or some kind of material between the skin and the burn itself."
