SynthesisScientific reports2025
Extreme ambient temperature and emergency healthcare service utilization due to substance use disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Synthesis in Scientific reports, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
To synthesize the association between extreme ambient temperatures and the utilization of emergency healthcare services for substance use disorder (SUD). We performed a systematic literature review of original research published between 2000 and 2023 using five databases (PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, WoS, and Scopus) for literature search, and assessed study quality and risk of bias. A random-effects meta-analysis was conducted to calculate the odds ratios (OR) for SUD-related emergency healthcare service utilization during periods of extremely high or low ambient temperatures. Of 709 articles screened, eight studies met the eligibility criteria. Six studies focused on emergency department (ED) visits, while two examined on-site emergency care utilization. The risk of SUD-related ED visits was significantly higher when the mean ambient temperature was in the top 5% of the temperature distribution range (pooled OR = 1.11, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.07, 1.15). Conversely, the risk of SUD-related ED visits was lower when the mean temperature was in the bottom 5% of the distribution (pooled OR = 0.94, 95% CI: 0.89, 0.99). Our review showed the extremely high ambient temperature is associated with higher risk of SUD-related emergency healthcare service utilization. However, given the high heterogeneity observed across studies, these results should be interpreted with caution. Differences in study design, population characteristics, geographic region, and substance type may have contributed to this heterogeneity. Despite these differences, this finding highlights the importance of considering environmental factors in the management and prevention of SUD-related health issues.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.