Red Cross Blogs

Shivering? You must have heatstroke

By Brad Smith
December 13, 2009 at 6:35 pm

Last Wednesday I was teaching on one of our standard first aid courses. The topic of the day? Extremes of temperature.

We looked at a range of conditions, from heatstroke to hypothermia. On looking at the signs and symptoms of heatstoke, one of my students said she was shivering when she suffered from heatstroke while camping. “That’s not what it says in the book!” I said.

“Well, I was definitely shivering!” she replied.

We do hear some weird, non-textbook symptoms when we’re treating casualties. This was certainly one of them. But not the most extreme. That’ll have to be a topic of another blog post.

So what signs and symptoms should you be expecting if you suspect heatstroke? Your casualty might have a headache, dizziness or discomfort. They might be dazed and confused. They could have hot, flushed and dry skin and a full, bounding pulse. Plus their response might be going rapidly downhill. They’ll also likely have a temperature in excess of 40 °C.

What do you do? You need to lower their body temperature – quickly – and get them to hospital. Phone 999. Remove their outer clothes – but allow them to keep their modesty – and wrap them in a sheet or light clothing. Then drench them in water. Use a hose if necessary, you have to cool them down with whatever tools you have to hand

Once their temperature’s back to normal – that’s 36-37 °C – replace the wet sheet with a dry one and keep checking their level of response, breathing, temperature and their pulse rate, until an ambulance arrives.

Yes, I do appreciate the perceived irony of writing about heatstroke at the onset of the British winter, but it’s not necessarily caused by heat. OK, so it can lead on from heat exhaustion, but it’s caused by our brain’s thermostat – the hypothalamus – failing to do it’s job of regulating our body’s temperature.

Don’t forget to ask me your first aid questions or suggest scenarios to cover in future audioblogs – I’d love to answer any first aid questions you’ve got. And if you missed the first one, listen to it now.

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Tags: First aid, first aid tips, heatstroke, hypothermia, temperature

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