Process at Hachijo Hospital

until Emergency Helicopter Transport

Abstract

　The scale of the medical institution is different according to each island in Tokyo, and the disease and conditions that the institution can treats are also different. Hachijo Town Hospital has 6 doctors and 52 beds, relatively can treat various diseases. However, when the treatment of disease and the transfer to support hospitals using of airplane or ship is considered to be difficult, emergency helicopter transport is needed. The total time required for transport using helicopter has shortened gradually, but it is rare to investigate the process of treatment before transport. In the present study, we investigated about the details of helicopter transport cases and the time from patient's consultation to dispatch of helicopter. The time from patient's consultation to request of emergency helicopter was 1 hour 48 min, and the distribution of this time had two phase what were early phase and late phase. The cases in the early phase group were mainly acute myocardial infarction, intracranial hemorrhage, and serious injury. In these cases, there was no significant difference in the time from patient consultation to request of helicopter according to the time zone of patient's consultation and doctor's years of experience. Therefore, it was considered that capacity of medical institution less affected the time between patient's consultation and request of helicopter. On the other hand, the cases in the late phase group were that we treated for a while in our hospital but the condition became worse or didn't get better, or what needed advanced treatment by support　hospitals although the condition became steady. In these cases, the time until transporting could be shortened by consultation to support hospitals beforehand. The time from request of helicopter to dispatch of helicopter was 1 hour 10 min. Among these, the reason of relatively late cases was mainly bad weather condition. One-month survival rate after helicopter transport was about 90%, so it was considered that helicopter transport systems had operated effectively.