Epidemiological and clinical profile of Korean travelers receiving international medical repatriation

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the experiences of medical transportation of Korean travelers who suffered accidents abroad and then transferred home by our aeromedical team. We collected demographic and clinical data on patients injured while traveling abroad from January 2013 to July 2017. Descriptive analyses based on 4 different transportation methods and transport time since hospitalization were performed. A total of 33 patients were repatriated during the study period. Of these, 28 (84.8%) were trauma cases with pedestrian injuries being the most common (11 cases; 39.3%). Twenty patients were repatriated by flight-stretchers, 6 by flight-prestige, 2 by ship, and 5 by air ambulance. The air ambulance was the most expensive (average 61,124 US Dollars) mode of transportation (P=.001) and the ship took the longest time (14 hours) to transport patients back to Korea from regions with similar distance (P=.0023). We experienced medical repatriation of 33 seriously injured Korean travelers back to South Korea. Transfer time should be an important considering factor and directly contacting and communicating with the specialized staff of foreign hospitals could also be very important to reduce unnecessary overseas hospital stay and cost incidence.