Ballester, JoanQuijal-Zamorano, MarcosMéndez Turrubiates, Raúl FernandoPegenaute Pérez, FerranHerrmann, François R.Robine, Jean-MarieBasagaña Flores, XavierTonne, CathrynAntó i Boqué, Josep MariaAchebak, Hicham2023-10-062023-10-062023Ballester J, Quijal-Zamorano M, Méndez Turrubiates RF, Pegenaute F, Herrmann FR, Robine JM, Basagaña X, Tonne C, Antó JM, Achebak H. Heat-related mortality in Europe during the summer of 2022. Nat Med. 2023 Jul;29(7):1857-66. DOI: 10.1038/s41591-023-02419-z1078-8956http://hdl.handle.net/10230/58052Over 70,000 excess deaths occurred in Europe during the summer of 2003. The resulting societal awareness led to the design and implementation of adaptation strategies to protect at-risk populations. We aimed to quantify heat-related mortality burden during the summer of 2022, the hottest season on record in Europe. We analyzed the Eurostat mortality database, which includes 45,184,044 counts of death from 823 contiguous regions in 35 European countries, representing the whole population of over 543 million people. We estimated 61,672 (95% confidence interval (CI) = 37,643-86,807) heat-related deaths in Europe between 30 May and 4 September 2022. Italy (18,010 deaths; 95% CI = 13,793-22,225), Spain (11,324; 95% CI = 7,908-14,880) and Germany (8,173; 95% CI = 5,374-11,018) had the highest summer heat-related mortality numbers, while Italy (295 deaths per million, 95% CI = 226-364), Greece (280, 95% CI = 201-355), Spain (237, 95% CI = 166-312) and Portugal (211, 95% CI = 162-255) had the highest heat-related mortality rates. Relative to population, we estimated 56% more heat-related deaths in women than men, with higher rates in men aged 0-64 (+41%) and 65-79 (+14%) years, and in women aged 80+ years (+27%). Our results call for a reevaluation and strengthening of existing heat surveillance platforms, prevention plans and long-term adaptation strategies.application/pdfeng© The Author(s) 2023. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41591-023-02419-zEpidemiologyHealth policyinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess