Abstract
Self-assessed survey potentially underestimates the number of person with previous history of heat disorders (HD) when the respondents are not familiar with HD. The purpose of the present study was to clarify whether the studying HD prior to survey affect the number of person with previous history of HD. Ninety collegiate students participated in a self-assessed survey designed to clarify the prevalence of HD experiences from the periods of elementary to high school ages. The survey was carried out before (pre-L) and after (post-L) the HD education which took approximately an hour. Completed survey was received from 83 (92.2%) students. At pre-L 16 students (19.3%) had experienced HD while respondents significantly increased to 31 (37.3%) at post-L (p<0.05). Mean times of HD experience among respondents were 1.31±0.79 (standard deviation) times at pre-L (n=16), and were changed to 1.83±1.18 times at post-L (n=31), but were not significant (p=0.12). Number of respondents who experienced heat exhaustion and heat cramps significantly increased after the education (pre-L; 4, and 1 respondents, post-L; 20 (p<0.05), and 7 (p<0.05) respondents, respectively), while changes in respondents with previous history of heat stroke and unknown were not significant (pre-L; 2, and 9 respondents, post-L; 1, and 3 respondents, respectively). Most of the HD was occurred at junior- to high school when they were engaged in sports club activities. These results suggest that lecture to understand HD prior to survey is needed to comprehend the number of person with previous history of HD.
