Physiological strain and decision making affected by different cooling tactics following live-fire training

Multiple factors, including different environmental, physical and psychophysiological agents, influence firefighters health and safety in real fire and rescue operations. This experimental study investigated the effect of live fire training and cooling strategies on both physiological response and decision making. Twenty three healthy male firefighters performed live firer tasks in four separate conditions: namely rest or without cooling method (WCM), cool vest (CV), forearm immersion (FI), cool vest and forearm immersion (CV+FI). Cooling effects of the employed interventions were evaluated based on heart rate (HR), tympanic temperature (TT), IOWA gambling task (IGT) scores. At the end of the four experimental conditions, heart rate (HR) and tympanic temperature (TT) increased, while IGT scores as a measure of decision making decreased relative to baseline. HR (beats per minute) and TT (XC) were significantly lower at the end of the experiment in the CV, FI and CV+FI compared with the WCM conditions. There was no significant difference in IOWA scores between experimental conditions. These consequences demonstrate that live fire tasks is effective in raising the physiological and decision making responses following firefighting activities. It is concluded that CV, FI and .CV+FI were more effective than the WCM in attenuating physiological responses and decision making during live fire training

کلیدواژه ها:

Live fire ، firefighter ، physiological response ، IOWA gambling task ، decision making