Why Airplanes Should Have Doctors

Why Airplanes Should Have Doctors

By: Mya Bradford

A lot of people, including me, love to fly and travel the world but have you ever thought about what would happen if a medical emergency happened while on a plane. You’re 38,000 feet in the air, you look over and someone is having a heart attack what do you do? There’s no doctor aboard and the only thing you can do is try and use the emergency kit that contains: aspirin, oxygen, and nitroglycerin. It would be very scary when there is no real doctor there to help.

Statistics show that between 2004-2019 24% of heart attacks happened on a plane. According to yahoo.com, About 1,000 passengers per year experience sudden cardiac death on commercial flights, according to a 2011 study published in the Singapore Medical Journal. "More people die of heart problems on flights than in airplane crashes, Monks and his colleagues said.” Flying is hard on the heart because of the cabin pressure. It can cause high blood pressure which can cause exacerbation of heart disease. You should especially be cautious if you have heart failure, CAD, or an arrhythmia. According to heart.org, “People who had a cardiac arrest at the airport survived to hospital discharge 44% of the time, compared to 15% for those whose cardiac arrest happened on a plane.” This shows us that there isn’t a very high chance of you surviving if you have a heart attack on a plane.

I can see why people would say that we shouldn’t have doctors on airplanes because they would have a valid point in saying that it would be more expensive to have a doctor on the plane and it would be taking the doctor’s time away from helping people who aren’t flying. The other side may argue that if you have heart problems then don’t get on a plane but anyone with heart problems is fine to get on a plane, but if they recently had a heart attack then they would have to wait ten days to fly again. If we have doctors on planes I think that the percentage of people surviving heart attacks on planes would increase heavily. There are a lot of other doctors to help the people who aren’t flying, so I don’t think it would hurt to have one doctor on each plane for every airline.

Everyone has their own opinion, but If there was a doctor aboard they would know exactly what to do because they went to college exactly for a type of scenario just like this. I know that flight attendants are also trained for it but they didn’t go to school for ten to fourteen years to save people’s lives. The doctor would be able to think fast and try to save the person’s live. The fact is they have more experience than someone who is suppose to provide route services. I hope that one day in the future this will happen!

Sources:

Tanya Lewis, “About 1,000 passengers per year experience sudden cardiac death on commercial flights, according to a 2011 study published in the Singapore Medical Journal. More people die of heart problems on flights than in airplane crashes, Monks and his colleagues said.”, yahoo.com, “Man Having Heart Attack on Plane Saved By Passengers.” yahoo, 3 September 2014. https://www.yahoo.com/news/man-having-heart-attack-plane-saved-passengers-130901493.html 25 September 2022.

Thor Christensen, “People who had a cardiac arrest at the airport survived to hospital discharge 44% of the time, compared to 15% for those whose cardiac arrest happened on a plane.” heart.org, “Thanks to CPR and AEDs, air travelers have higher-than-average survival rates from cardiac arrest”, yahoo, 14 September 2021, https://www.heart.org/en/news/2021/09/14/thanks-to-cpr-and-aeds-air-travelers-have-higher-than-average-survival-rates-from-cardiac-arrest, 25 September 2022.