• Yuki Enomoto, Asuka Tsuchiya, Yusuke Tsutsumi, Hitoshi Kikuchi, Koji Ishigami, Junpei Osone, Masahito Togo, Susumu Yasuda, and Yoshiaki Inoue.
• From the Department of Emergency and Critical Care Medicine, National Hospital Organization Mito Medical Center.
• Pediatr Emerg Care. 2021 Jul 1; 37 (7): 365370365-370.

ObjectivesThe effectiveness of Japanese helicopter emergency medical services (HEMS) and interventions at the scene is not clear as regard children. For effective use of HEMS at the clinical scene, we need to clarify the characteristics of pediatric patients cared for by HEMS. Therefore, the objective of this study was to describe the characteristics of pediatric scene flights and to describe the procedures performed on the patients.MethodsThis was a retrospective cohort study based on the database for children aged younger than 18 years who were cared for by physician-staffed HEMS of Ibaraki prefecture, in Japan. We reviewed the database for air medical transports conducted at our institution from July 2010 to December 2016.ResultsDuring the 6.5-year period, the Ibaraki HEMS attended to 288 children. The median age of the children was 11 (interquartile range, 5-14) years. Of the total, 196 (68.1%) of the children had trauma-related injuries. The head was the most common site of significant injuries (12.4%). The most common cause of nontrauma incidents was seizure (9.0%). In 65.9% of the patients, the injury or illness was of mild or moderate severity at the scene. An intervention was applied at the scene in 76.0% of the cases: 75.1%, intravenous route; 6.9%, intubation; and 13.4%, drug administration. Of those patients, 29.1% were discharged from the emergency department. In-hospital mortality accounted for 1.5% (n = 2) of the cases.ConclusionsAlthough the condition at the scene of most of the pediatric patients transported by the physician-staffed HEMS was not severe, an intervention was frequently applied from the scene. Improving the dispatch criteria and monitoring compliance are needed for appropriate use of HEMS.Copyright © 2018 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.

9 keywords...

hide…