Characteristics of trauma patients treated by Helicopter Emergency Medical Service and transported to the hospital by helicopter or ambulance.

Introduction: Trauma patients treated by the Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS) can be transported to the hospital either by helicopter or by ambulance, in both cases accompanied by the HEMS physician. The objectives of this study are first to compile an overview of patients treated and transported by the HEMS team with either the helicopter (patients transported by helicopter, PTH) or with the ambulance (patients transported by ambulance, PTA). In addition, to evaluate whether the existing information systems obtain relevant data for researching the decision-making process. The second objective is to identify potentially influencing factors that could be significant for further research.

Methods: All patients in the period from 1 January 2011 until 31 December 2020, treated by HEMS and subsequently transported to hospitals were included in the study. To avoid overrepresentation of the PTA group, a random sample was taken, creating two groups in a 1:2 ratio (PTH n = 724, PTA n = 1448). Differences in patient and treatment characteristics between PTH and PTA were compared using t-tests, Mann-Whitney U tests, and chi-square tests.

Results: PTH accounted for 12.2% of all transports. Approximately two-third of the patients were male and the mean age was around 40 years. PTH had lower iEMV (initial Eye opening, best Motor response, best Verbal response) and iRTS (initial Revised Trauma Score) scores, were more frequently transported to a level 1 trauma centre, underwent more prehospital treatments and were roughly twice as far from their hospital of arrival compared to PTA.

Conclusion: The current dataset is, after some modifications, suitable to provide a comprehensive overview of patients treated by HEMS in the Netherlands. A predictive model could be developed using this dataset, which should include factors such as the patient's location, age, distance to the hospital, physician on duty, mechanism of injury and overall injury severity.