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Medical Service on Plane As a physician who travels quite a lot, I spend a lot of time on planes listening to that dreaded Is there a doctor on board? announcement. Ive been called only once for a woman who had merely . But the made me quite curious 3)how often this kind of thing happens I wondered what I would do if confronted with a real midair medical emergencywithout access a hospital staff and the usual emergency equipment. So when the New England Journal of Medicine last week published a study about in-flight events, I read it interest. The study estimated that there is an average of 30 in-flight medical emergencies on U.S. flights every day. Most of them are not serious; fainting and dizziness are the most frequent complaints. 13% of themroughly four a dayare serious enough to a pilot to change course. The most common of the serious emergencies heart trouble, strokes, and difficulty breathing. Lets face it: plane rides are . For starters, cabin pressures at high altitudes are set at roughly what they would be if you lived at 5,000 to 8,000 feet sea level. Most people can tolerate these pressures pretty easily, but passengers with heart disease experience chest pains as result of the reduced amount of oxygen flowing through their blood. common in-flight problem is deep venous thrombosisthe so-called economy class syndrome . happens, dont panic. Things are getting better on the in-flight-emergency front. Thanks to more recent legislation, flights with at least one attendant are starting to emergency medical kits to treat heart attacks. | 
