Epidemiology and clinical outcomes of emergency medical events at an international airport

Abstract

The use of airplanes is becoming increasingly frequent worldwide. However, although the number of flight passengers is steadily increasing, there is no comprehensive database that accurately reflects the frequency of emergency medical events that occur in airports. We evaluated the characteristics and treatment outcomes of patients who had emergency medical events at an airport. We retrospectively reviewed cases of patients who had emergency medical events at International Airport between May 2013 and April 2018. A comparative analysis was conducted on gender, age, disease, temperament, and average length of stay between patients visiting the airport and the general population visiting the emergency room (ED). Among the 258,823 patients who visited our ED during the study period. A total of 846 patients (0.3%) were transferred from the airport; the proportion of men was 59.3%, the mean age of the subjects was 43.7 ± 20.1 years. The admission and mortality rates of the patients in the airport group were relatively higher (35.1% and 2.6%, respectively) than that of those in the direct ED visit group (21.6% and 0.5%, respectively). Abdominal disease was the most common medical problem, and the most common causes of death were sudden cardiac arrest and acute myocardial infarction. Future prospective studies are necessary to affirm its findings.