Air Ambulance and Emergency Retrieval Services in Western Australia: Caseload Analysis Over 5 Years.

The Royal Flying Doctor Service Western Operations (RFDSWO) provides critical care transfer and retrieval services across 2.5 million km We performed an analysis of our retrieval database looking at the workload from January 1, 2012, to December 31, 2016. This included the number of patients, age, ethnicity, type of retrieval, priority, diagnosis, and distances covered. Forty-three thousand forty-one patients underwent Royal Flying Doctor Service air transfer over a 5-year period. Aboriginal patients comprise around 3.1% of the Western Australian population but accounted for 33% of RFDSWO retrieval missions. There was a mean transfer rate of 8,608 patients per year, which was relatively consistent across the study period. The modal age was 55 to 59 years, but Aboriginal patients were younger with a mean age of 36.5 years (Aboriginal) versus 49.7 years (non-Aboriginal). The types of retrieval undertaken were as follows: primary (17.3%), secondary (81%), and repatriation (1.7%). The urgency/priority of missions was as follows: immediate (7.3%), urgent (54.5%), and semiurgent (38.1%). The 3 most common diagnosis (International Statistical Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision) categories were trauma/injury (22.9%), cardiovascular (22.3%), and gastrointestinal (10.5%). The modal distance flown was 700 km per mission. RFDSWO has 1 of the largest retrieval workloads in the world, covering a landmass comparable with Western Europe. This brings with it a variety of challenging cases and complex logistics, often in extremely harsh and remote environments. We bring a wide breadth of experience in the area of retrieval medicine, and our aim is to share these experiences with other teams.

Informations de copyright

Copyright © 2019 Air Medical Journal Associates. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.