Parents are being urged to be aware of the risks of medical emergencies involving their children during journeys by plane. A new study suggests that about one sixth of health-related incidents on passenger flights involves children, and many are preventable.
A team from Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina found that among children as a whole vomiting was the most common type of medical incident (34 percent), ahead of high temperatures (22 percent), and acute allergic reactions (5.5 percent). Other common incidents involved abdominal pain and seizures.
About one seventh of paediatric medical emergencies on planes involved infants travelling on the lap of a parent. A third of these cases involved high fevers, with vomiting, blunt trauma, breathing difficulties, allergic reactions and seizures also significant.
Alexandre Rotta, the study’s lead author, recommends some common-sense precautions.
“Remember to carry your child’s medicine onto the plane rather than leaving it in checked baggage,” he says, “since on-board emergency medical kits are not tailored to address issues most commonly experienced by paediatric travellers.”
The researchers looked at in-flight medical emergency records from 77 airlines operating across six continents between January 2015 and October 2016. There were more than 75,000 unique medical emergency calls and almost 12,000 involved minors under the age of 19.
They found that crew members provided the vast majority of paediatric in-flight emergency care (87 per cent), with doctor or nurse passengers volunteering help in 11 per cent of cases.
Most issues were resolved in-flight, with only one-in-six needing additional care after landing. Only a tiny proportion — 0.5 per cent — required the flight to be diverted. “The decision to divert rests ultimately with the pilot who must weigh multiple factors, including the safety of all passengers and crew, fuel load and the availability of suitable diversion points,” says Rotta.– dpa
