Department of Environmental, Agricultural, and Occupational Health, University of Nebraska Medical Center, College of Public Health, Omaha, NE; Global Center for Health Security, Omaha, NE.
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX.
Air Med J. 2023 May-Jun;42(3):201-209. doi: 10.1016/j.amj.2022.12.007. Epub 2023 Jan 3.
In 2019, our team conducted a literature review of air medical evacuation high-level containment transport (AE-HLCT) of patients infected with high-consequence pathogens. Since that publication, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in numerous air medical evacuations. We re-examined the new literature associated with AE-HLCTs to determine new innovations developed as a result of the pandemic.
A literature search was performed in PubMed/MEDLINE from February 2019 to October 2021. The authors screened abstracts for the inclusion criteria and reviewed full articles if the abstract was relevant to the aim.
Our search criteria yielded 19 publications. Many of the early transports of patients with COVID-19 used established protocols for AE-HLCT, which were built from the most recent transports of patients with Ebola virus disease. Innovations from the identified articles are subdivided into preflight considerations, in-flight operations, and postflight operations.
Lessons gleaned from AE-HLCTs of patients with COVID-19 in the early weeks of the pandemic, when little was known about transmission or the severity of the novel disease, have advanced the field of AE-HLCT. Teams that had never conducted such transports now have experience and processes. However, more research into AE-HLCT is needed, including research related to single-patient portable isolation units as well as containerized/multipatient transportation systems.
2019 年，我们的团队对感染高后果病原体的患者进行空中医疗后送高生物安全水平运输（AE-HLCT）的文献进行了回顾。自那次发表以来，新冠疫情导致了许多空中医疗后送。我们重新检查了与 AE-HLCT 相关的新文献，以确定疫情带来的新创新。
2019 年 2 月至 2021 年 10 月，在 PubMed/MEDLINE 中进行了文献检索。作者根据纳入标准筛选摘要，并在摘要与目标相关时审查全文。
我们的搜索标准产生了 19 篇出版物。许多新冠患者的早期后送使用了为 AE-HLCT 制定的既定方案，这些方案是基于最近埃博拉病毒病患者的后送建立的。从已确定的文章中得出的创新可细分为飞行前考虑、飞行中操作和飞行后操作。
在新冠疫情早期，当人们对传播或新型疾病的严重程度知之甚少时，从新冠患者的 AE-HLCT 中吸取的经验教训推动了 AE-HLCT 领域的发展。以前从未进行过此类后送的团队现在已经有了经验和流程。然而，仍需要对 AE-HLCT 进行更多的研究，包括与单人便携式隔离单元以及集装箱/多患者运输系统相关的研究。
