When the emergency alarm sounds, blood pressure (BP) among firefighters often soars, according to preliminary research presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2021.
“All emergency and first responders should be aware of their health. They should know what their typical blood pressure level is and be aware of how it fluctuates. Most important, if they have high blood pressure, they should make sure it is well-controlled,” said senio author Deborah Feairheller, PhD.
The study recruited 37 male and 4 female volunteer and municipal firefighters who wore ambulatory BP monitors during an on-call work shift lasting at least 12 consecutive hours. In addition to the automatic BP readings from the monitor, study participants were instructed to prompt the monitor to take a BP reading whenever a pager or emergency call sounded and whenever they felt they entered a stressful situation. Participants also logged activities and call types for each measurement. The firefighters’ average age was 41.2 years. Average body mass index (BMI) of all participants was 30.3, with BMI ≥ 25 defined as overweight, while BMI ≥ 30 is defined as obesity. The firefighters all had high blood pressure, defined as systolic BP as 130 mm Hg or higher, or a diastolic BP of 80 mm Hg or higher, as defined by the American Heart Association’s most recent guideline.
The findings were that:
- Average BP and heart rate (HR) were 131/79.3 mmHg and 75.7 beats per minute (bpm) respectively.
- Compared with the reading immediately preceding the call, systolic BPsurged an average of 19.2 mm Hg with fire calls and 18.7 mm Hg with medical calls.
- Meanwhile, diastolic BP surged 10.5 mm Hg with fire calls and 16.5 mm Hg with medical calls.
- Compared with the average BP during the entire 12-hour shift, systolic BP was 9% higher during fire calls, and diastolic BP was 9% higher during medical calls.
- Average HR also increased during both types of calls: 10bpm with fire calls, and 15bpm for medical calls.
- There were no significant differences in BP, HR or BP surge levels when comparing responses among fire calls, medical calls, riding an emergency vehicle or false alarms.
Surprising findings
“The public knows the value that emergency responders provide to communities. We hope to increase awareness that many firefighters have hypertension and that their blood pressure can increase to very dangerous levels when responding to emergency calls,” said Dr Feairheller.
“The current data show that almost 75% of firefighters have hypertension, and less than 25% have their blood pressure under control. I hope that our research can help identify occupational factors that affect blood pressure and increase awareness among this population,” Dr Feairheller added.
They were also surprised at the findings on diastolic BP increases. “We anticipated systolic blood pressure surges because that reading is usually more responsive to stimuli; however, the extent of the diastolic blood pressure surge was unexpected,” said Dr Feairheller.
The investigators are currently exploring whether diet and exercise regimens could help to lower the BP surge that firefighters experience during emergency calls.
Source: EurekAlert!
