Amid a deadly heat wave, hospitals are using body bags to save lives.

As a deadly heat wave scorched the Pacific Northwest last month, overwhelming hospital emergency rooms in a region unaccustomed to triple-digit temperatures, doctors resorted to a grim but practical tool to save lives: human body bags filled with ice and water.

Officials at hospitals in Seattle and Renton, Washington, said that as more people arrived experiencing potentially fatal heatstroke, and with cooling catheters and even ice packs in short supply, they used the novel treatment to quickly immerse and cool several elderly people.

Zipping heatstroke patients into ice-filled body bags worked so well it could become a go-to treatment in a world increasingly altered by climate change, said Dr. Alex St. John, an emergency physician at UW Medicine’s Harborview Medical Center.

“I have a feeling that we’re looking at many more days of extreme heat in the future, and this is likely to become more common,” he said.

Despite the macabre connotation of body bags, using them is a cheap, convenient and scalable way to treat patients in mass casualty emergencies caused by excessive heat, said Dr. Grant Lipman, a Stanford University professor of emergency medicine. He co-authored a pioneering case study documenting the use for heatstroke of what doctors call “human remains pouches.”

“When people are this sick, you’ve got to cool them down fast,” Lipman said.

Heatstroke is the most dangerous type of heat

illness, a medical emergency that leads to death in up to a third of hospitalized patients. The core body temperature rises to 104 degrees Fahrenheit or higher, which can damage the brain and other organs. Heatstroke can be particularly dangerous for children and older people, whose bodies don’t regulate temperature well.

Patients typically would be treated with strategically placed ice packs or misted with water and placed in front of huge fans. Some emergency room staffers immerse patients in large tubs of water or insert cooling catheters into the body’s large veins.

During emergencies, however, equipment, ice and time may all be in short supply.

St. John treated nearly two dozen heatstroke patients on June 28, the hottest period of a six-day heat wave, when temperatures in Seattle shot up to a record-breaking 108 degrees. Overall, nearly 2,800 emergency department visits for heat illness were logged from June 25 through June 30 in a region that includes Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska, including more than 1,000 on June 28 alone, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 112 deaths in Washington and 115 deaths in Oregon have been linked to the heat wave.

Among the sickest patients St.

John saw was a woman in her 70s who arrived at the Harborview ER on June 28 confused and weak, with a core body temperature of 104 degrees. A family member had discovered her ill at home. St. John said a colleague had mentioned the body bag technique just days earlier, so he gave it a try.

The treatment involves filling a body bag with a slurry of water and ice, putting the patient inside and zipping the bag just up to the armpits to allow access for medical equipment and close monitoring. The self-contained bag keeps the ice and water close to the patient’s skin.

Within minutes of being placed into the bag, the woman’s temperature dropped to 100.4 degrees, just enough to “get her out of that danger zone,” St. John said.

As the effects of climate change lead to hotter temperatures in more places — including historically temperate zones where air conditioning isn’t in wide use — using body bags to rapidly treat heat illness is a logical solution, said Lipman.

“Every hospital has body bags. Every hospital has ice machines,” Lipman said.

For now, the body bag treatment has been studied mostly in younger, healthier people, and some doctors worry about the effects of cold water on older people and whether the technique might induce shivering that actually raises body temperature. Lipman agrees further study is needed but said his experience has found “the cooling benefits will outweigh any harm of shivering.”