Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

When you’re hunting, fishing, or camping in January, remember: even though we’re in Texas, temperatures can drop well below freezing. Cold temperatures and strong winds increase the risk of hypothermia.

Dorian Drigalla (Dre-gal-a) is an assistant professor of Emergency Medicine at Scott and White Memorial Hospital.

09—Hypothermia is a condition where the body’s temperature drops below normal and certain physiologic changes happen the body because of that.

There are three stages of hypothermia that determine the severity.

41—Stage one, or mild hypothermia, is when the body’s temperature drops from what is considered normal down between 1 and 3 degrees below that.

Stage two – becomes a little bit more obvious in that the person starts to realize they are more than just cold and while they are still conscious, they do realize that they are shivering more, the shivering becomes more noticeable and the rest of the body’s movements are less coordinated. It’s at this point that the body starts to appear more pale.

Stage three is when the body temperature drops below ninety degrees. At this point, the body’s reflexes start to fail, the shivering intended in the prior two stages to help warm the body starts to fail. Concentration, speaking and thinking become more difficult.

Severe hypothermia can lead to organ failure and death.

Back country treatment of hypothermia tomorrow

That’s our show…with support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 19th, 2012 at 12:00 am and is filed under Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.