Updated: Tuesday, 17 Apr 2012, 9:42 PM EDT
Published : Tuesday, 17 Apr 2012, 9:38 PM EDT
It now looks like when it comes to matters of life or death, a helicopter might be the way to travel.
"There have been studies that have questioned the real utility and effectiveness of helicopters," said Dr. Adil Haider with Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
"Some have concluded that there's potential harm, more harm than good, more cost," said Dr. Samuel Galvagno, Junior with the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Researchers studied hundreds of thousands of patients over the age of 15 who had suffered a life threatening injury and were taken either to a level one or level two trauma center in the U.S. Their findings are published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"When you first look across the board, you'll see that actually more patients transported by helicopter in terms of just the raw percentages actually died," Galvagno said.
"When you do an analysis controlling for how severely these patients were injured, the chance of survival improves by about 30 percent for those patients who were brought by helicopter," Haider said.
"The helicopter and all that comes with it, the interventions they're doing on that helicopter, the fact that it's a very highly integrated part of our trauma system and speed, but there's some combination there that is clearly associated with improved survival for seriously injured trauma patients," Galvagno explained.
Researchers now say paramedics need better guidelines to determine which severely injured patients need helicopter transport.
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