After an unseasonably warm winter, you may be waking up this morning (Wednesday) to snow and ice. Weather forecasters are predicting six inches more or less of the white stuff. With past experience, I usually expect less. Hopefully in the Newsgram area, there will be very little ice compared to snow.

The American Journal of Emergency Medicine has a warning for those of you shoveling your way out of this weekend’s snow.

• In a 17-year study period, an average of 11,500 individuals a year are injured shoveling snow.

• The average annual rate of snow shovel–related injuries and medical emergencies was 4.15 per 100,000 population.

•Approximately two thirds (67.5%) of these incidents occurred among males.

• Children younger than 18 years comprised 15.3% of the cases, whereas older adults (55 years and older) accounted for 21.8%.

• The most common diagnosis was soft tissue injury (54.7%).

• Injuries to the lower back accounted for 34.3% of the cases.

• The most common mechanism of injury/nature of medical emergency was acute musculoskeletal exertion (53.9%) followed by slips and falls (20.0%) and being struck by a snow shovel (15.0%).

• Cardiac-related ER visits accounted for 6.7% of the cases, including all of the 1647 deaths in the study.

• Patients required hospitalization in 5.8% of the cases. Most snow shovel–related incidents (95.6%) occurred in and around the home.

You may be shoveling wrong. The American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons advises you to push the snow instead of lifting it. If you do have to lift the snow with your shovel, don't twist your body to toss the snow over your shoulder. That stresses your back muscles.

Hoarding before a Storm

When a bad storm is predicted, there’s often a rush to stock up on groceries and personal care items. It seems to me that people in this area tend to stock up on bread and milk as those shelves tend to empty first.

What do the items we grab say about us and our expectations? If you snap up milk and bread, it probably means you think it will pass fairly quickly. But if you buy up canned goods, you may be thinking about hunkering down for a lot longer than bread and milk would last.

Pittsburgh Magazine put forward a theory that hoarding milk and bread may be rooted in decades-old shortages that happened after storms before cities immediately plowed streets, and before we had markets around seemingly every corner.

Beware Falling Iguanas

South Florida has a unique cold weather problem. A recent Florida weather advisory warned of falling iguanas. It seems the cold-blooded creatures become rigid and fall out of trees when temperatures drop below freezing.

New CPR Guidelines during the Pandemic

In case you come upon someone in distress from snow-shoveling or a fall, you need to be aware of recommendations for CPR during this time of Covid-19.

The new guidelines just out from the American Heart Association say that before you perform CPR to get a person’s heart restarted, you should put on personal protective equipment, including respirators, gowns, gloves and eye protection.

Of course, that might be easier in a hospital setting, where PPEs might be nearby, but it hardly seems practical outside of the medical setting. If you are in a home setting or someplace where you can grab a PPE gown, gloves and respirator, the American Red Cross has some advice:

We recommend placing a face mask or face covering over the mouth and nose of the victim. If only 1 mask is available and it is simple face mask or face covering, we recommend placing it on the victim.

While CPR with breaths has been shown to be beneficial when compared to compression-only CPR, during the Covid-19 outbreak, it is currently recommended that no rescue breaths be performed for adult cardiac arrest patients with confirmed or suspected Covid-19, due to the risk of disease transmission.

When assessing for normal breathing, we recommended that the CPR/first aid care provider looks for breathing but does not listen or feel for the victim’s breathing, as this will minimize potential exposure.

We recommend that adult victims of sudden cardiac arrest receive continuous compression-only CPR from their CPR/first aid care provider until emergency personnel arrive. Note: Compression-only CPR saves lives compared to no CPR.

Cardiac arrests that occur after a breathing problem (which is often the case in infants and young children), drowning and drug overdoses may benefit from standard CPR that includes compressions and rescue breaths. Note: It is recognized that in some of the cases, the victim may also have Covid-19. However, if a lay responder is unable or unwilling to provide rescue breathing with CPR, compression-only CPR should be initiated.

I hope you’re well-stocked up on food items, snow shovels and ice melt. Be safe.