Icy weather conditions send more people to CT hospitals, doctors say. Last weekend ‘was a doozy

New Haven Register – Wednesday, February 19, 2025
By Tracey O’Shaughnessy

Connecticut emergency room doctors say they don’t need to watch the weather to know when ice strikes. That’s when they treat the consequences of falls, particularly among older adults who are most at risk.

“This weekend was a doozy,” Dr. Wesley Kyle, director of emergency medical services, at Saint Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury, said of last weekend’s ice storm that wreaked havoc across Connecticut. “We consistently see a lot of broken wrists and arm bones, hips broken, and, unfortunately shoulders.”

Saint Mary’s has yet to assemble data on emergency room visits Saturday, and Yale New Haven Hospital and Griffin Hospital in Derby reported the same data delay. At Saint Mary’s however, spokesperson Stephanie Valickis said that while the total number of typical ER visits did not jump, the number of patients with injuries because of falling on ice did.

Slipping on a piece of ice is a particularly dangerous fall because the ice adds to the velocity and rotation with which a patient hits the ground, said Dr. Michael Leslie, an orthopedic trauma surgeon at Yale New Haven Hospital. “The biggest issue we have is that (these falls) happen very fast and very violently. You wind up having a ground level fall plus the speed. We’ve had a number of people who are taking the garbage out in their T-shirt or slippers and the slippers so now we are dealing with an injury plus hypothermia,” he said.

Leslie said the hospital is treating ankle fractures, upper extremity issues like shoulders and wrists and “quite a number” of injuries around joint replacement.

“You have these Baby Boomers with knee and hip replacement that then have a very violent fall around the bone that the prosthesis that is set in,” he said. “That’s a very significant procedure.”

Ice is particularly dangerous for older adults, doctors said, many of whom are are taking anticoagulation medication, which puts those who fall and hit their head at a “severely high risk for bleeding with head trauma.”

Anticoagulants, used by more than 8 million Americans, according to AARP, help prevent blood clots. Because they slow down the rate that blood takes to clot, they can increase the risk of excessive bleeding when injured. “You could easily develop an intracranial hemorrhage, causing a brain bleed” or hemorrhagic stroke, which could be life threatening. he said.

Kyle’s best advice: stay inside. And if you must go outside, use proper footwear with heavy treads to allow better grip.

“I see so many elderly people that go out to get their newspaper in the morning, or get their mail,” Kyle said. “By the time, I see them it’s too late, but I wish I could tell them it’s just not worth it to get the paper today or tomorrow or even in a week. The same thing with the mail, especially when you realize that you know if you’re an octogenarian and you break your hip you know that could be the end of the road or at least the end of your independent life.”

Nancy Corvigno of Griffin Hospital in Derby, said the hospital has seen an increase in wrist, ankle, back, hip and shoulder injuries. “We’ve been hit hard by these freakish storms,” she said. “A lot of the injuries happen because we’re rushing out the the car, falling on the ice. Someone doing shoveling, they are coming upon the ice and falling.”

If you must get the mail or the paper, call a friend or neighbor, the doctors said. As for the dog walkers. Kyle suggests using a long leash to allow pets to go outside to void. “It’s a time where if you can kind of pull the leash out the door and let them do their business as close to the house as possible.”

Kyle said Saint Mary’s has had two calls from the field to pronounce the death of an elderly person who fell on the ice or snow and was not found until they were dead. “So, if you are going outside, bring your phone with you or a First Alert button. We don’t know how long they were down for,” he said of the deceased. Calls to the Waterbury Police Department for confirmation were not returned.

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