Abstract ---When psychological and physiologic adaptation mechanisms become dysfunction to environment
induced a period of elevated heat stress, heat-related emergencies occur. Heat-related illness may
be trivial to life threatening. They represent a continuum of disorders such as heat edema, prickly
heat, heat cramps, heat tetany, heat syncope, and heat exhaustion to critical disease well known as
heat stroke. It can be easily found in higher temperature situation such as the hot summer in Taiwan
or those who have chronic medical diseases, older than 75 years, younger than 4 years, mental
illness, alcoholics, and vigorous exertion without proper training and acclimatization. Due to the high
mortality is from 10 to 75 % in heat stroke, delay treatment after 2 hours onset of severe symptoms
may result in poor outcome. Early recognition and prevention become more important as early
actually treatment. For the above reasons, the articles about heat stroke were reviewed to help
emergency physicians to be familiar with the heat related illnesses and cooling techniques and
provide optimal management for such victims.