A widely used tool for predicting cardiovascular problems failed to identify more than half of the 15 pilots who experienced cardiovascular events within five years of being evaluated, according to a study by a team of New Zealand researchers.1
The team’s report on the study of 16 years of data, published in the May issue of Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine, said that during that time frame, they identified 15 cases involving cardiovascular events in pilots working for an operator identified only as an Oceania-based airline.
Of the 15, six were detected during a routine cardiovascular screening involving use of a risk calculator that considered the pilot’s age and sex, cholesterol levels, blood pressure and whether he or she was diabetic or smoked tobacco. The remaining nine cases were classified as sudden clinical presentations that had not been foreseen.
Of the 15 cases, only one occurred during flight, and it di…
