Tài liệu Báo cáo y học: "In-flight medical emergencies: time for a registry"

Airline travel is safe and reasonably comfortable, but many factors, including psychological stress, jet lag, and preexisting disease, can cause a small number of passengers to become ill. There is no central registry of inflight medical emergencies. Each airline tracks its own events, making it difficult to determine the true incidence of specific illnesses that occur during flight. In a recent article published in Critical Care, Sand and colleagues [1] studied the epidemiology of inflight medical emergencies by collecting data from two European airlines over 5 years. This study provides valuable information that is of interest to specialists in aerospace medicine and to every physician who travels by air and may be called upon to help a fellow passenger. Epidemiologic studies such as this one make it possible to conduct meaningful research and can be used to identify trends in inflight medical emergencies. The ultimate benefit is improved clinical management of passengers who become patients.