Health assessment in aviation medicine: an overview.

Abstract

Aviation medicine is perceived as one of the younger sub-specialities of occupational medicine. However, man was beginning to master flight with balloons in the late eighteenth century and the first application of sound scientific principles to the effects on man of the aviation environment was Paul Bert’s work on hypoxia in the early nineteenth century [1]. The early balloonists soon learned the requirements for environmental protection from cold and hypoxia, but generally did not consider their own medical fitness for the flight. It was Wilbur Wright’s flight in a heavier than air machine in late 1903 that launched the modern era of air travel. However, the foundations of the need for consideration of the pilot’s physical and medical fitness to fly came from the development of the aeroplane as a machine of war. High losses sustained during the early air campaigns due to ‘physical defects’ of the pilots prompted the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Squadron to define standards for military aircrew, many of which are still extant [2].