Approximately 3 billion people worldwide travelled by commercial air transport in 2016. A calculation based on the number of passengers transported shows that between 1 out of 14,000 to 1 out of 50,000 passengers will experience acute medical problems during a flight. While cardiac arrest accounts for just 0.3% of all in-flight medical emergencies, it is responsible for 86% of in-flight events resulting in death. Recently, the Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher died following a cardiac arrest she suffered on a plane journey to Los Angeles.
Despite this high fatality rate of in-flight cardiac arrest (IFCA), so far, no guideline for IFCA exists that provides specific treatment recommendations. Thus, a DGLRM task force was created to develop a guideline for the treatment of in-flight cardiac arrest based on clinical and investigational expertise in this area.
Several main recommendations have been developed, which include:
Dr Hinkelbein says: “This is the first guideline providing specific treatment recommendations for in-flight medical emergencies during commercial air travel. This is of major importance to recommend proper actions and procedures since the airplane environment as well as equipment will be significantly different to what can be provided for medical emergencies on the ground.”
He and his team will now begin raising awareness of the guideline by directly contacting individual airlines and asking them to incorporate it into their emergency procedures.
Read more at: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-06-cardiac-plane-journeys-guidelines.html#jCp
This post was published on 7 June 2017 06:38
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