• Sarah Morton, Gaynor Wareham, and Peter Sherren.
• Essex Herts Air Ambulance, Flight House, Earls Colne Business Centre, Earls Colne Business Park, Earls Colne, Colchester, Essex, CO6 2NS, UK; Department of Surgery, Imperial College, London, UK. Electronic address: sarah.morton@doctors.org.uk.
• Injury. 2023 Sep 1; 54 (9): 110885110885.

BackgroundHelicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS) may be tasked to equestrian related incidents. Previous studies have suggested that majority of patients do not require HEMS specific interventions. No data has been published since 2015 so this article aims to establish the current incidence of equestrian incidents attended by one UK HEMS and identify trends that would aid the dispatch of HEMS to the patients who most need it.MethodsA retrospective review of the computerised record system for one UK HEMS was performed between 1st January 2015-30th June 2022. Demographic data, timings, suspected injury pattern and HEMS specific intervention details were extracted. The 20 patients with the highest confirmed injury burden were reviewed in detail.Results257 patients (229 female) were treated by HEMS (0.02% of all HEMS dispatches). Of those 124 dispatches were due to interrogation of the 999 calls by a clinician on the dispatch desk. Only 52% were conveyed to hospital by the HEMS team; 51% had no HEMS specific intervention. Of the 20 most severely injured patients their pathology included splenic, liver, spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries.ConclusionWhilst HEMS dispatches to equestrian incidents remain a small percentage, there are four mechanisms that may benefit due to potential injury burden: fall onto head with suggestion of hyper-extension or hyper-flexion injury; kick to the torso; horse fallen or repetitively rolled onto patient and, no movement of patient since incident. In addition, age >50 years should be considered as higher risk.Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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