["Radio-medical Advice Service"--14 years of overseas medical advice].

From 1980 to 1993, the Danish Radio Medical Advice Service (RMAS) had 1136 contacts from overseas Danish merchant ships and 213 contacts from Danish territorial waters. The distribution of the diagnoses in the overseas contacts were: Diseases in the digestive and genitourinary system 30%, traumatic lesions 23%, infectious diseases 14%, diseases in the cardiovascular and respiratory system 9%. The only trend over the years was a significant (p = 0.01) decrease in psychiatric diagnoses. Evacuation was recommended in 53% and medicine was prescribed in 61% of the contacts. The medical speciality for doctors participating in RMAS should be general surgery or orthopaedic surgery but access to advice from all other medical specialities should be available. Experience as a naval medical officers would be beneficial. The education of the officers on the ships should include intravenous infusion. The communication should be by telephone and television would be an advantage.