Heart Disease Deaths Among Firefighters, Essay Example

In the contemporary science, there are various approaches to conducting research and its representation. The crucial aspect is that often the choice of single method or aspect results in leaving out another one. Thus, it is quite difficult to achieve a systematic analysis of a certain issue. The case of the connection between firefighters’ heart disease death and their professional activity is not an exception. The aim of this paper is to conduct a critique on Kales and his colleagues “Emergency Duties and deaths from Heart Disease among Firefighters in the United States”.

From the rhetorical perspective, the article is well-organized and well-presented to convince the audience in the existence of the aforementioned connection. In this regard, the statistic data is explained in a non-technical manner in order to enhance audience’s understanding. Moreover, the data is well-discussed and analyzed, giving an exact conclusion:

“Fire suppression, which represents only about 1 to 5% of firefighters’ professional time each year, accounts for 32% of deaths from coronary heart disease and was associated with a risk of death from coronary heart disease that was approximately 10 to 100 times as high as the risk associated with nonemergency duties.” (Kales, et al., 2007).

This finding was explained by the increased demand of cardiovascular system during the fire suppression. In this regard, the primary minus of this article and the research is that it is not very detailed about the exact causes of that demand and how certain activities of firefighting profession affects one’s body. In other words, the impact of carbon monoxide   to which firefighters are exposed during the suppression of fire was not mentioned and analyzed in terms of its severity and situational characteristics (Duenas-Laita, et al., 2006). This factor is essential since various other studies demonstrated that individuals expose to both  mild and severe intoxication of carbon monoxide are likely to develop various heart conditions including myocardial injury and coronary heart disease (Langan-Fox and Cooper, 2011).

Another factor not considered was personal specifics of each studied case. In this regard, crucial factors that could have a tremendous impact on the data and its analysis included the predisposition of studied firefighters to heart diseases, their smoking and drinking habits, physical condition and hemoglobin condition. In this regard, for the non-smoking firefighters using their breathing equipment correctly still results in 9.1% of the carboxyhemoglobin level, which inevitably affects their health (Duenas-Laita, et al., 2006).

The emphasizing of this parameter suggests that the authors of the studied article should have paid more attention to the medical configurations of the research rather than statistical data analysis. They indeed were careful in selecting data the most suitable for the chosen research and took into consideration various non-linear variables like sizes of the cities, urban and rural areas, timeframe of death reacted to various activities (Rom and Markowitz, 2007).

The authors also outlined the limitations of their research, stating that generalization of the data undermined the potential findings for specific cases in rural and urban areas and the factors influencing them. Moreover, the study was based on narratives and official data rather than the actual autopsy reports. Finally, other factors like time of the day and seasonal characteristics were not taken into account (Kales, et al., 2007).  Thus, the authors realized the lack of systematic approach to their research, the outlining of which is string side of the article.

Although some aspects of the issue were not covered in the article, it did not intend to conduct and exhaustive research of the subject but to verify the posed hypothesis through the analysis of statistics.  In this regard, it can be argued that the research achieved its purpose, and the article managed to reach the audience through a well-structured argument. However, from the research perspective of the target subject, the article only demonstrates a single aspect of the entire problem and thus should be further expanded.

From the point of data accuracy, the strength of the article and the consequent credibility of its findings is that fact that the official data was used. Regarding the findings except for the necessity of further systematic analysis of the factors influencing the increase of heart disease for firefighters the conclusions of the authors do not contradict the existing professional expertise on the subject matter (Langan-Fox and Cooper, 2011). In terms of the personal reflection, I found this article well-balanced, accessible, and constructive in its narrative. It achieves what it aimed to achieve; however, it could benefit from an in-depth explanation of exact processes and factors influencing the findings. The research could also benefit from further categorization of the studied cases by age groups, health conditions and previous backgrounds, since one’s lifestyle has a tremendous impact on heart conditions (Rom and Markowitz, 2007).

Overall, from all mentioned above, it can be concluded that the explored article achieved its aim: explained the correlation between heart disease and firefighting activities through the analysis of statistical data. The narrative is well-balanced accessible both for specialists and a wider audience. On the other hand, from the academic and research perspectives, the article could benefit from a more systematic approach and the inclusion of the medical exploration of the factors influencing the studied cause-effect relationship.

References

Duenas-Laita, A. et al. (2006). Cardiovascular manifestations of Carbon monoxide poisoning. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 47(3). Retrieved from http://content.onlinejacc.org/article.aspx?articleid=1137255.

Kales, S., Elpidoforos S. et al. (2007). Emergency Duties and Deaths from Heart Disease among Firefighters in the United States. The New England Journal of Medicine, 356. Retrieved from http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa060357#t=articleBackground.

Langan-Fox, J. and Cooper, C. (2011). Handbook of Stress in the Occupations. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Rom, W. and Markowitz, S. (2007). Environmental and Occupational Medicine. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.