So accepting a pilot with a PR interval above the previous cutoff represents a significantly increased risk for arrhythmias, such as atrial fibrillation, and is associated with an increase in all-cause mortality (over the 30-40 year study period). That’s what I get out of the article.
“It can only be a matter of time before a catastrophic air accident occurs due to a pilot’s adverse health event. But the destruction will likely mask the evidence, so it’s quite possible we’ll never know.”
But the article doesn’t say what the same risk is for people with the previous cutoff, and I don’t know it and don’t want to spend time looking up what should already have been in the article. If the risk is nearly zero, but now is still nearly zero (although higher than before), is this a difference that makes a difference? And how much risk is “acceptable” to the public? A lot, if you think of its penchant for driving, but not much of the COVID scare is instead considered. And if the all-cause mortality is higher in people with a larger PR, implying worse heart disease, what is the average age for those deaths? Is it within 2 years of exam, or 20 years after retiring from being a pilot??? And what is the real risk of an incapacitation and a subsequent catastrophic air event (which planes presumably have a copilot and perhaps also computer-aided flying and landing), from atrial fibrillation or some degree of heart block which are at increased RISK of occurring with a higher PR interval???
And autopsies are done on pilots who crash, and frequently when they die on the ground because they’re usually “young” and “relatively healthy” (or they wouldn’t be active pilots, right????). Unless a body is totally burned up or the heart itself is destroyed in a crash, which isn’t very often, pre-existing heart disease can be found and documented. Mind you, no autopsy can show the function of the heart at the time of air catastrophic event (arrhythmias and heart blocks are physiologic events that don’t show up on a non-beating, i.e., dead, heart). The autopsy will (maybe) show just possible reasons why an increased PR interval or a dysrhythmia (of several types) might have been present.
My point is not to doubt the reportedly increased risk, but to highlight how the news article doesn’t really understand the science or what “increased risk” really means, or what a post-crash autopsy might show, and what amount of risk is acceptable to the public, and I would love to have had those covered in the article.
I'm not sure what you meant by the use of the word "driving" in this sentence, but it got me to think about driving a car.
Let's say that if people generally have the same risk of a vaccine reaction whether they are piloting a commercial airliner or driving the family car, then obviously the pilot's death that leads to a plane crash would lead to hundreds of dead while the car crash might kill only 1-4 people. It's worse if it's a bus driver or train operator.
We've all been reading the stories about healthy young people who died suddenly while walking about, but what about people who died behind the steering wheel of a car?
The recent story about the autopsy results of actor/comedian Leslie Jordan was that he died from sudden cardiac dysfunction. The car was found crashed into a tree; did Jordan die from the stress of the crash or did he die from a heart attack and then the car crashed into a tree?
I think the media should start reporting on solo car crashes as well as suddenly collapsing youths, as these can be identifiable incidents worth investigating.
Unexplained motor vehicle crashes may be indicators of potential rates of pilot heart failure.
-PJ