About 6,200 Americans are hospitalized each summer due to excessive heat, and those at highest risk are poor, uninsured, or elderly, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). About 180 people who were hospitalized for heat exposure died in 2005, according to the AHRQ analysis.

Severe heat exposure, called hyperthermia, occurs when body temperatures rise to 106 degrees Fahrenheit or more. Heat exhaustion symptoms range from nausea and vomiting to weakness, headache and muscle cramps. More extreme heat Stroke may cause a rapid pulse, difficulty breathing, mental confusion, seizure and Coma.

AHRQ's analysis, based on 2005 data, found that:

• People from communities with average household incomes of $36,999 or less were hospitalized more than twice as often as people who came from wealthier areas where average household incomes topped $61,000.
• The rate of hyperthermia hospital admissions for uninsured patients was significantly higher (17 percent) than hospital admissions for uninsured patients as a whole (5 percent).
• The hospitalization rate for people over 65 with hyperthermia was 15 times greater than for people age 17 and younger.
• The rate of admission for hyperthermia in the South (3.1 per 100,000 population) was more than twice that of the Midwest and West (1.4 per 100,000 each). The Northeast had a rate of 1.7 per 100,000 for hyperthermia.