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Air medical services
Air medical services are the use of aircraft, including both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters to provide various kinds of urgent medical care, especially prehospital, emergency and critical care to patients during aeromedical evacuation and rescue operations.
During World War I, air transport was used to provide medical evacuation – either from frontline areas or the battlefield itself.
In 1928, in Australia, John Flynn founded the Flying Doctor Service (later the Royal Flying Doctor Service), to provide a wide range of medical services to civilians in remote areas; these included from routine consultations with travelling general practitioners, to air ambulance evacuations and other emergency medical services.
Fixed wing military air ambulances came into regular use during World War II. Helicopters became more commonly used for such purposes during the Korean and Vietnam wars.
Later, helicopters were introduced to civilian health care, especially for shorter distances, in and around large cities: transporting paramedics or specialist doctors as needed and transporting patients to hospitals, especially for major trauma cases. Fixed-wing aircraft remained in use for long-distance medical transport.
Air medical services can travel faster and operate in a wider coverage area than a land ambulance. This makes them particularly useful in sparsely populated rural areas.
Air medical services have a particular advantage for major trauma injuries. The controversial theory of the golden hour suggests that major trauma patients should be transported as quickly as possible to a specialist trauma center. Therefore, medical responders in a helicopter can provide both a higher level of care at the scene of a trauma and faster transport to a trauma center. They can also provide critical care when transporting patients from community hospitals to trauma centers.
Air ambulance transport is expensive, and if utilised poorly is therefore not cost effective. When inappropriately deployed to a patient close to a hospital, an air ambulance may add delay to the patient reaching the hospital. In research from 1996, air ambulance services in England and Wales demonstrated no evidence of improvement in vehicle response times (i.e. time from 999 call to an ambulance vehicle being on-scene with the patient) for air ambulance attended patients compared to those attended by a land ambulance. The same review found patient did not arrive at hospital any quicker when attended by an air ambulance. When the same authors looked at health outcomes in Cornwall and London they found no evidence that the attendance of an air ambulance (HEMS) service improved survival in trauma patients.
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Air medical services
Air medical services are the use of aircraft, including both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters to provide various kinds of urgent medical care, especially prehospital, emergency and critical care to patients during aeromedical evacuation and rescue operations.
During World War I, air transport was used to provide medical evacuation – either from frontline areas or the battlefield itself.
In 1928, in Australia, John Flynn founded the Flying Doctor Service (later the Royal Flying Doctor Service), to provide a wide range of medical services to civilians in remote areas; these included from routine consultations with travelling general practitioners, to air ambulance evacuations and other emergency medical services.
Fixed wing military air ambulances came into regular use during World War II. Helicopters became more commonly used for such purposes during the Korean and Vietnam wars.
Later, helicopters were introduced to civilian health care, especially for shorter distances, in and around large cities: transporting paramedics or specialist doctors as needed and transporting patients to hospitals, especially for major trauma cases. Fixed-wing aircraft remained in use for long-distance medical transport.
Air medical services can travel faster and operate in a wider coverage area than a land ambulance. This makes them particularly useful in sparsely populated rural areas.
Air medical services have a particular advantage for major trauma injuries. The controversial theory of the golden hour suggests that major trauma patients should be transported as quickly as possible to a specialist trauma center. Therefore, medical responders in a helicopter can provide both a higher level of care at the scene of a trauma and faster transport to a trauma center. They can also provide critical care when transporting patients from community hospitals to trauma centers.
Air ambulance transport is expensive, and if utilised poorly is therefore not cost effective. When inappropriately deployed to a patient close to a hospital, an air ambulance may add delay to the patient reaching the hospital. In research from 1996, air ambulance services in England and Wales demonstrated no evidence of improvement in vehicle response times (i.e. time from 999 call to an ambulance vehicle being on-scene with the patient) for air ambulance attended patients compared to those attended by a land ambulance. The same review found patient did not arrive at hospital any quicker when attended by an air ambulance. When the same authors looked at health outcomes in Cornwall and London they found no evidence that the attendance of an air ambulance (HEMS) service improved survival in trauma patients.