Frozen Kansas City Chiefs fans required amputations after frigid game

Several Kansas City Chiefs fans attending a playoff game on a bitterly cold January day in Missouri suffered frostbite that required amputations, according to the hospital that treated them.

Twelve people — including some football fans who were at Arrowhead Stadium on Jan. 13 — had to undergo amputations that mainly involved fingers and toes, the hospital, Research Medical Center in Kansas City, said in a statement Saturday.

The center says it has treated dozens of patients who suffered frostbite during an 11-day cold snap. Not all patients with amputations attended the Chiefs game. Some were people working outside in the extreme cold, the hospital said.

The exact number of fans who attended the game and had amputations was unclear. The hospital said there was some overlap between the fans and those who had also been working outside.

The hospital also noted that the symptoms of frostbite can develop slowly, and that many of the frostbite patients it treated could not identify when their injuries occurred — when their pain, numbness and other symptoms began.

The hospital said it has seen a record number of frostbite patients since the burn center opened 11 years ago.

The National Weather Service did that warned of dangerous temperatures that week, starting on January 6, with Arctic air pouring into the plains.

“Our specialist physicians and expert care team continue to treat and monitor patients’ healing to meet long-term needs, and we expect to see more surgical procedures over the next two to four weeks as their injuries evolve,” the hospital said.

At the kickoff of the game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Miami Dolphins, temperatures hovered around minus 4 degrees, with a wind chill of minus 26 degrees.

Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ helmet burst open during a tackle, a failure that the helmet manufacturer said was caused by the extreme cold.

Dr. Megan Garcia, the medical director of the hospital’s Grossman Burn Center, said in an interview with WDAF-TV that the Chiefs fans who came in with frostbite injuries had to schedule amputation surgeries after weeks of hospital treatment.

Treatment included warming the injured areas, applying antibiotics and thrombolytic therapy to dissolve blood clots and restore circulation, and hyperbaric oxygen therapy to boost oxygen to injured areas to reduce swelling.

Patients with frostbite experience “lifelong tenderness and pain,” said Dr. Garcia, “and will always be more susceptible to frostbite in the future.”

During the cold wave in January, the medical center’s parent company reported information about frostbite on its website, warning that it can happen within minutes of skin exposure to frigid air, and in less time at wind chill.

People who work outside in winter are especially vulnerable, the hospital said in a statement, as are people “attending football matches, the elderly, pregnant women and children waiting at bus stops to go back to school.”

Frostbite occurs at ‘extremely cold temperatures’ according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with injury often occurring during the thawing process as blood vessels become damaged by clots and inflammation, choking blood flow.

Although frostbite can occur anywhere on the body, it most commonly affects exposed areas such as the nose, ears, cheeks, chin, fingers and toes.

Julie Loving, a physician assistant in the emergency department at Adirondack Medical Center in Saranac Lake, N.Y., said the hospital treats three to five patients for frostbite each winter.

After administering medications to expand blood vessels and generate new tissue, patients undergo a bone scan, she said.

“Sometimes it can take days, sometimes weeks, before you decide someone needs an amputation,” she says. “If someone presents to the ER that first day, there’s no way to predict.”

Instead, she added, members of the medical staff monitor how the tissue evolves. If the tissue doesn’t heal, it becomes infected and amputation is necessary, she said.

Prolonged exposure to cold weather also puts people at risk of hypothermia, a sudden drop in body temperature and lung diseases, such as pneumonia.

A representative for the Kansas City Chiefs did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.

Cold weather is often a feature of NFL games, where fans congregate but sometimes strip down and go shirtless to stand out in the crowd.

The coldest game in NFL history was the Ice bowl of 1967, when the Green Bay Packers defeated the Dallas Cowboys in a New Year’s Eve game. The temperature in Wisconsin was minus 13 degrees at kickoff.