Airplane Medical Reporting System Questioned
Frequency of
medical emergencies remains largely a secret to the
public
Investigative Reporter Elyce Kirchner examines what happens when medical emergencies happen at 30,000 feet and how often the public finds out about them.
Is there a doctor
on board? That is something airplane passengers don't want to hear at
30,000 feet, but doctors say the number of people needing medical help on
airplanes will increase as the flying population ages.
How often medical
events actually happen in flight remains largely a secret to the public because
the Federal Aviation Administration doesn't require airlines to report them. But
the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit discovered that medical emergencies may be
happening more often than anyone knows. And now some doctors are putting
pressure on the airline industry to make the data publically available.
"Before I
experienced this it never occurred to me that the airlines didn't collect this
kind of data," said Dr. Melissa Mattison.
The Harvard
Medical School professor responded when a passenger had a seizure on her flight
in January 2011. A few months later in a May issue of the Journal of the
American Medical Association, Mattison and colleague, Dr. Mark Zeidel, advocated
for a standardized recording system for all in-flight medical emergencies with
mandatory reporting of each incident to the National Transportation Safety
Board. Look in the document bin to read the article.
They also called
for the debriefing of anyone directly involved with an in-flight medical event.
They wrote that "collecting these records and disseminating lessons learned may
help improve the care given during in-flight medical emergencies throughout the
domestic airline fleet." Their call has yet to be answered.
"Anytime they ask
for a medical professional on board to tend to another passenger they should be
filling out a standard reporting form that should be filed in a database,"
Mattison said. "There are older, sicker people flying and we are not
systematically addressing the problem of in-flight medical emergencies."
Seventy-four year
old Southern California resident Concepcion Venegas died on an airplane after
having a heart attack onboard a Southwest Airlines flight traveling from Phoenix
to Ontario, Calif. in May 2005.
"She was on a
trip (and) was supposed to come home the next week," said Venegas's daughter,
Rosa Arencibia. "We never expected her to die."
According to the
family's attorney, a retired EMT stepped up to help but was unable to revive
her, and the pilot decided to continue on with 50 minutes left in flight.
Arencibia and her
family sued Southwest Airlines for negligence after her mother's death and a
jury found that the airline did everything possible to care for her. The airline
did not want to comment on the lawsuit.
"Maybe there was
a chance for her to survive," Arencibia said. "I believe they didn't do
everything they possibly could to save my mother's life."
When there are
medical problems in the sky, 90 percent of commercial airlines in the United
States will call MedAire, a global emergency response center that provides
real-time medical assistance to pilots, flight attendants
and medical
professionals who may be on board. The company's headquarters is based in the
Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center in Tempe, Ariz., where doctors are
available 24 hours a day to field phone calls that come in from flight crews.
Other airlines have in-house medical crews to deal with in-flight
emergencies.
"Every major
airline in this country will have some sort of ground-based service to help them
in dealing with inflight medical events," said Dr. Paulo Alves, MedAire's Vice
President of Aviation and Maritime Health.
In 2011, MedAire
received 22,594 calls for service, which the company claims represents about one
medical event for every 30,000 passengers. The company said that in the same
year less than three percent of calls resulted in an unplanned landing or
emergency diversion to another airport. But these figures may reflect just a
fraction of the in-flight emergencies that actually occur each year. The
Investigative Unit found that many airlines do track in-flight medical
emergencies, but choose not to make the information available to the public.
Kelly Skyles,
safety coordinator with the Association of Professional Flight Attendants and
current American Airlines flight attendant told NBC Bay Area that she receives
reports for every medical event that happens on board American Airlines
flights-from routine events such as when a passenger gets airsick to serious
life-threatening instances.
"There is a
medical event that occurs every single day, seven days a week," Skyles said. "It
may not be a major medical situation but it gets documented and reports go
out...it gets added to the database."
NBC Bay Area
tried for weeks to get the airlines to explain why they do not make data public,
contacting 15 other air carriers by email and phone but all declined to comment
for the record on camera.
The Investigative
Unit also discovered that airlines face a number of challenges when responding
to in-flight medical emergencies. NBC Bay Area obtained NASA's Aviation Safety
Reporting System database where pilots and flight attendants can anonymously
report problems on a voluntary basis. The database chronicles emergencies
including 576 incidents where passengers needed medical attention on board since
2001. The database represents just some of the in-flight medical emergencies
that happen on commercial airplanes.
According to the
database, some flight attendants reported having difficulties communicating with
medical ground crews such as MedAire, calling the communication "very poor."
Others reported that "for medical consultants to be an effective tool in an
emergency situation the flight attendants need a
direct phone
connection..." Go to the link bin to take a look at the database.
Even MedAire
admitted communication can be a challenge because oftentimes calls are routed
through the busy cockpit.
"The level of
care that we can provide and the level of handling depends heavily on the
quality of the communication," Alves said.
He admitted that
there is no current mandate from the FAA to improve this communication or to
document the number of in-flight medical events that occur on board, but he says
he supports a more transparent reporting system.
The FAA does
require that flight attendants know basic life support skills such as how to
administer CPR, and also mandates that airlines keep an automated external
defibrillator (AED) on board. The agency also requires that airlines carry a
medical kit during all flights and that they contain specific items including a
stethoscope, tourniquet and certain medications. Look in the document bin for
FAA regulations about medical kits.
But the
Investigative Unit found out that the contents of medical kits vary because
airlines often add to the FAA's list of required items.
"So what happens
is an emergency medical kit on one airplane is organized differently than an
emergency medical kit on another airplane," Mattison said. "It's my opinion that
the kits be standardized and uniform across the board so that responders can
know what is in the kits and how to find it."
Mattison believes
that if airlines make in-flight medical events public, the industry would be
better informed about what kinds of medical emergencies really happen. She says
that would dictate what kinds of items contained in a medical kit are the most
necessary, and in turn, would make airlines better equipped to respond to sick
passengers.
"Are they
cardiac?" Mattison asked. "Related to breathing? We could use that information
to inform what we should put in the emergency medical kit and make the kits
standard across the board no matter what airlines you are on. Every kit will be
the same. And then we can educate physicians and others who are responding."
The FAA did
collect data about airplane medical emergencies for five domestic air carriers
during a 12-month period between 1996 and 1997, including how frequently air
crews used medical kits. Look in the document bin to see the results.
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