Experience of medical evacuation of injured in emergencies using aircrafts of Russian EMERCOM

Abstract

Air medical service operates in most regions of Russia. Over the past years, the use of air medical service to provide routine medical care has decreased by 30 %. Percentage of flights to eliminate health consequences of emergency situations (ES), including traffic accidents, is not more than 10 %. Experience of evacuation of injured has shown that without special aviation medical devices it is impossible to adequately solve the problem of emergency medical evacuations. In this regard, the Russian Emergencies Ministry together with ZAO (closed corporation) «Zarechie» has developed special medical aircraft (helicopter) modules, along with justification of their medical and technical requirements; their necessary equipment and application characteristics were determined, training programs for medical staff were developed. 77 % of ES victims are in severe and extremely severe condition, with concomitant or combined injuries. From 2008 to 2012, using helicopter and aircraft medical modules 315 ES injured were evacuated, including 12 children and 74 patients with the use of mechanical ventilation. Condition of 22.5% of evacuated patients was considered as moderate or severe, 50.8% - as severe, 26.7% - as extremely severe. By example of a fire in the entertaining center called «Lame Horse» (Perm, 2009) it has been demonstrated that the use of medical modules for air medical evacuation reduced mortality rate 3.3 times at prehospital stage and 2 times at the hospital stage (p < 0.05) in comparison with the evacuation without the use of specialized modules.