Short-term PM and emergency department admissions for selective cardiovascular and respiratory diseases in Beijing, China.

Background: Few studies have explored PM's connection with specific respiratory and cardiovascular emergency department admissions (EDAs). This study aimed to examine the overall effects of PM on EDAs for cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, including specifically, cerebrovascular events (CVE), ischemic heart disease (IHD), arrhythmia, heart failure (HF), upper respiratory tract infection (URTI), lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma.

Methods: We collected daily data for EDAs from the 10 largest hospitals in Beijing, between January 2013 and December 2013 as well as daily measurements of PM from 17 stations in Beijing. The generalized-additive model was utilized to evaluate the associations between daily PM and cardio-pulmonary disease admissions. Differences in gender, age, and season groups were also examined by models. Relative risks (RR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) were calculated based on subtype, age, gender and seasonal groups. In all, there were approximately 56,212 cardiovascular and 92,464 respiratory emergency admissions presented in this study.

Results: The largest estimate effects in EDAs of total cardiovascular disease, CVE, IHD, total respiratory diseases, URTI, LRTI and COPD were found for PM at day 4 (accumulative) moving average, were 0.29% (95% CI:0.12%, 0.46%), 0.36% (95% CI:0.11%, 0.61%), 0.68% (95% CI:0.25%, 1.10%), 0.34% (95% CI:0.22%, 0.47%), 0.35% (95% CI:0.18%, 0.51%), 0.34% (95% CI:0.14%, 0.55%), 2.75% (95% CI:1.38%, 4.12%) respectively. In two-pollutant models and full-pollutant model modified confounding factors, the positive correlation remained unchanged. The elderly (age ≥ 65 years) and male subjects were more susceptible to specific respiratory diseases. PM's impact on EDAs for HF was found higher during the hot season however, EDAs for COPD peaked during the cold season.

Conclusion: The study markedly informed that PM pollution was strongly associated with EDAs for cardio-pulmonary diseases. The effects of PM pollution on COPD and heart failure EDAs were clearly determined by seasonal-temperatures.