Int J Environ Res Public Health
October 2022
The healthcare sector recognises the role of nature in mental health. The tourism sector is equipped to take people to national parks. The conservation sector gains support from visitors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the past, victims of electrical and lightning injuries have been assessed in a manner lacking a systematic formulation, and against criteria, particularly in the area of neuropsychological disability. In this manner patients have, for example, only been partially treated, been poorly or incorrectly diagnosed, and have been denied the full benefit of compensation for their injuries. This paper contains a proposal for diagnostic criteria particularly for the neuropsychological aspects of the post injury syndrome.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF: It is estimated that five thousand people die on Lake Victoria every year by drowning which is triggered by severe weather hazards like lightning. : In order to improve predictability of severe weather conditions on Lake Victoria, there is need to deliver timely and effective Severe Weather Early Warning Systems (SWEWS) to those at risk. On Lake Victoria, previous SWEW service trials ceased with the end of the funding grants.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: On 11 November 1994, 26 preadolescent girls, 2 adult supervisors and 7 dogs were sleeping in a tent in rural South Africa when the tent was struck by lightning. Four of the girls and 4 of the dogs were killed. The 2 adults were unharmed, but all but 3 of the children suffered significant injuries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To present recommendations for the education, prevention, and management of lightning injuries for those involved in athletics or recreation.
Background: Lightning is the most common severe-storm activity encountered annually in the United States. The majority of lightning injuries can be prevented through an aggressive educational campaign, vacating outdoor activities before the lightning threat, and an understanding of the attributes of a safe place from the hazard.
Objective: This study examines the prevalence of psychiatric morbidity in a large sample of electrical injury (EI) patients in three phases of recovery and its effects on cognitive functioning.
Methods: Eight-six self-referred EI patients received psychiatric and neuropsychological evaluations. Descriptive statistics were conducted to examine the prevalence of psychiatric morbidity.
Neuropsychological studies in electrical injury patients have reported deficits in attention, learning, and working memory, but the neural substrates of these deficits remain poorly characterized. In this study we sought to examine whether electrical injury subjects demonstrate abnormal patterns of brain activation during working memory and procedural learning tasks. Fourteen electrical injury subjects and fifteen demographically matched healthy control subjects performed a spatial working memory paradigm and a procedural learning paradigm during functional MRI studies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrior to1989 no known support group existed for victims of lightning or electrical shock injury and their families. A lightning strike survivor of twenty years, Steve Marshburn, recognized the need both from his personal experience and after meeting two other survivors. With his wife and psychologist, he formed Lightning Strike and Electric Shock Survivors International.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAbdominal pain is a frequent presentation to the Emergency Department and it is often difficult to find a clear diagnosis. This is a unique case of a woman with worsening abdominal pain over 2 days with no clear etiology despite extensive, repeat evaluations with eventual spontaneous resolution. The diagnosis of chemical peritonitis was established when the patient revealed an extremely rare mechanism of injury the night before presentation that has never been described previously.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe present case study examined changes in peripheral markers of free radical metabolism and skeletal/myocardial muscle damage 30 h after a mountaineer had survived a lightning storm, having experienced contact with what was considered to be "upward leaders" at 4200 m. Sea-level control data were available between 3 and 8 weeks prior to the altitude sojourn for comparative purposes. Follow-up measurements were obtained for the same individual 3 weeks following the incident after simulated exposure to the combined stresses of inspiratory hypoxia and physical exercise.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe report on the largest case to date of children with significant injuries from a single lightning strike. A retrospective analysis was done of the camping scene and injuries to 28 people (26 preadolescent girls and 2 adult supervisors) and 7 dogs from a documented lightning strike. Of the 35 victims sleeping in the tent, 4 girls and 4 dogs were fatally injured.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOn average, lightning causes more casualties annually in the United States than any other storm-related phenomenon except floods. Although 90% of those injured survive, they may have permanent sequelae and disability. Many of these people incur injuries or are killed by lightning because of misinformation and inappropriate behavior during thunderstorms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe four classic electrical mechanisms of lightning injury cannot account for all injuries. A fifth mechanism, injury by a weak upward streamer that does not become part of a completed lightning channel, has long been postulated in the engineering literature by lightning researchers. This paper reports a case of death where injury from a weak upward streamer is strongly suspected following forensic investigation.
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