Medical Emergency on a Plane

Man having a heart attack saved by passengers.

When searching for aviation news stories related to medical emergencies, I came across an article by Tanya Lewis from last year about a man that has a heart attack while on a plane. The story is about a tragic event that had a good outcome.

While the plane was traveling in a remote area of the world on its way from Canada to Hong Kong, a passenger experienced a heart attack and cardiac arrest. Luckily, there were passengers and crew that were trained in emergency medical care. Three passengers, a pharmacist, doctor, and policeman helped resuscitate the man with CPR, medications, and equipment available on the plane. The man survived until the plane made an emergency landing and later made a full recovery.



According to the doctor on the plane, The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration requires all flights to carry AEDS, but its not an international mandate. Apparently medical emergencies on airplanes are common, occurring in about 1 in every 600 flights. About 1,000 passengers each year experience cardiac death on a commercial flight, making it more common for a person to die of a heart problem on a flight than an airplane crash. In this man's case, the outcome was great. Even without the luck of having healthcare professionals on board, with advances in telemedicine, the future of airplane safety seems promising for improvement in emergencies such as this one.

(Hofstetter blog post #5)