Air travel imposes physiological stresses that can exacerbate underlying medical conditions, highlighting the importance of preflight medical fitness evaluation.
Supports preflight assessment for at-risk travelers; leaves open prospective validation of event rates.
All flights impose preflight, inflight and postflight stresses; most of them are well tolerated by healthy passengers. However, reduced barometric pressure with concomitant decrease in partial pressure of oxygen in the aircraft environment make it a hostile place for passengers with even minor cardiac, respiratory, psychological, neurological, and gastrointestinal diseases. Other problems like deep vein thrombosis (DVT), jet lag, airsickness, decompression sickness, and fear of flying cannot be ignored. Spread of highly infectious and communicable diseases amongst passengers in closed confines of the aircraft cabin, is a major concern today. Every airline in the world has capability to render inflight medical care with onboard availability of first- aid and physician's kits, oxygen, and trained cabin crew. Today, most of the airlines have automated external defibrillators (AED) installed onboard for cardiac emergencies, few also have telemedicine links with physician's on ground. In conclusion, a trivial medical condition, if overlooked, may become a serious medical issue at 1828 meters to 2440 meters (6000 feet to 8000 feet) in the confines of an aircraft cabin.
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Mehra et al. (2004) studied this question.
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