BMJ 1995;311:1507-1508 (2 December)

Letters

Plane should not have left the ground

EDITOR,--I initially read about W Angus Wallace's adventure--in performing an operation on board an aeroplane flying from Hong Kong to London--in the British press and thought it a ripping yarn. When I read his own account of it I was aghast.1

When the patient was first drawn to Wallace's attention the aircraft was still on the ground in Hong Kong; this detail was not made clear in the newspaper accounts. Wallace was called to examine a woman who had been involved in a vehicle accident on her way to the airport. The accident was sufficiently violent to

have fractured a long bone. Despite having"attended an advanced trauma and life support course" he failed to examine the patient properly--on his own admission he did not carry out a full primary survey of the patient at the outset. Nor did he insist that the patient be transferred from the plane for a . . . [Full text of this article]


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Relevant Article

Fortnightly Review: Managing in flight emergencies
W Angus Wallace
BMJ 1995 311: 374-375. [Extract] [Full Text]

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