Solar eclipse didn’t increase hospital admissions
Hospitals across the U.S. prepared for a rush of patients who might be blinded by looking directly at the sun during Monday’s solar eclipse—but the rush never came.
STAT News says the preparations ranged from canceling elective surgeries and increasing emergency and acute care staff by nearly 40 percent in Oregon’s St. Charles Health System to several weeks of training for clinicians at Red Bud Regional Hospital in Illinois.
“The big thing we worry about is solar retinopathy, which is just [ultraviolet] light burning the retina,” said Ali Raja, MD, an emergency medicine physician at Massachusetts General Hospital.
While Raja and others saw people, including healthcare professionals, ignore warnings and stare directly at the sun without eye protection, patient volumes was light in the hours following the eclipse.
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John joined TriMed in 2016, focusing on healthcare policy and regulation. After graduating from Columbia College Chicago, he worked at FM News Chicago and Rivet News Radio, and worked on the state government and politics beat for the Illinois Radio Network. Outside of work, you may find him adding to his never-ending graphic novel collection.