Work on the Polish system began in 2013, when doctors Sylweriusz Kosiński and Tomasz Darocha and their team identified a lack of systematic procedures for severe hypothermia.
They developed treatment protocols, distributed guidance to emergency departments, ambulance services and mountain rescue organisations, and trained nearly 50,000 people online, as well as almost 1,000 rescuers and doctors in person.
Their work has already saved many lives. For example, two-year-old Adaś was found by a river in the winter of 2015, wearing only pyjamas, with a body temperature of 12.7°C. His hospitalisation took months, but the boy survived.
The researchers received a WHO award in 2022 for their work on saving people with hypothermia.
They say there is still much more that can be done in hypothermia research. They now want to conduct a free, transparent audit of severe hypothermia treatment in Poland using medical records from the past 13 years.
They want to identify where treatment can be improved and eventually create a national registry that could support research and better treatment protocols.
Japan already has such a registry, and Darocha helped develop it as an international expert. Japanese data show that around 70% of hypothermia cases are “urban hypothermia”, involving older, poorer people who become dangerously cold in their homes.
Polish researchers suspect a similar pattern may exist in Poland, but there is no national dataset to establish this.
“I believe that in Poland too, most cases of hypothermia involve not tourists stranded in the mountains, but elderly, poor and ill people whose homes no one visits,” Kosiński said.
Poland’s Personal Data Protection Office (UODO) said the challenge is properly anonymising medical data, which can require substantial human and financial resources.
The Health Ministry said medical registry data can be shared for scientific purposes in a form that prevents individuals from being identified, but there is currently no hypothermia registry.
Poland’s Medical Research Agency (ABM) said a national Health Data Access Body (HDAB) should be designated by 26 March 2027 and fully operational by 26 March 2029. The body will play a key role in the secondary use of health data.
(sp)
Source: PAP