Emergency rooms treat 40,000 with ice-related injuries

Hospital emergency rooms treated at least 40 thousand people with injuries sustained in a fall due to icy sidewalks and roads or while ice skating over the past period, according to a survey by the Dutch association of trauma surgery NVT in 20 hospitals. Broken wrists, hips and shoulders were the most common injuries, AD reports.

Most fractures could be treated with a plaster cast, but at least 1 thousand people had to undergo surgery. On Saturday and Sunday, the surveyed hospitals reported performing 5 to 10 times more trauma surgeries than on an average weekend.

NVT chairman Mike Hogervorst called the figures exceptional. "In some hospitals, surgeries were performed non-stop on multiple rooms. That rarely happens. This is actually not something you want at a time when regular healthcare is scaled down," he said to AD.

He called the many injuries inevitable. "Everyone was locked up for so long and wanted to go outside so badly," Hogervorst said to the newspaper. "I am impressed with how the healthcare staff coped with this."

Most hospitals were prepared for the many injuries, deploying extra nurses, doctors and trauma surgeons to the emergency rooms over the weekend. Most of the surveyed hospitals also scaled up their surgery capacity by opening additional operating rooms and running double shifts to staff them.