Investigation and analysis of the disease spectrum in the medical grounding flying personnel of Air Force

Objective To provide objective basis to the authorities for making health policies and aeromedical support measures by investigating the disease spectrum and its variations of the Air Force flying personnel who are grounded by medical reasons. Methods The data of the medical grounding flying personnel of Air Force, that were collected by the cluster sampling from January 1st, 1987 to December 31st, 2002, were retrospectively investigated. The database entry was completed by EpiData 3.0 and the double entry verification was used to ensure the quality. Data collation and statistical analysis were conducted by Excel 2003 and SPSS 11.5. Results ①From 1987 to 2002, the youngest age of medical grounding flying personnel of Air Force was 22 years old, the oldest age was 52 years old, and the average age was 33.42 years old. The number of the grounding personnel younger than or equal to 35 years old accounted for 62.98%, while the personnel older than 40 years old for 13.89%. ②The most common disease that caused the grounding from 1987 to 2002 was neuropsychiatric disease, that was 164.61 times of the blood system disease which ranked 12th in spectrum. ③The top ten diseases in the spectrum of the single disease that caused the grounding from 1987 to 2002 were headache, syncope, neurasthenia, gastric ulcer, viral hepatitis B, hypertension, chronic gastroenteritis, deaf, ear barometric dysfunction and refractive errors. The composition ratio of top 10 diseases accounted for 58.24%. The top three were functional diseases. Conclusions The medical grounding flying personnel of Air Force show a trend to younger age. Functional diseases account for high proportion. Both flying personnel and aeromedical support personnel should pay attention to these. Taking preventive measures and strengthening the medical interventions are suggested. Key words: Aerospace medicine; Data collection; Data interpretation, statistical; Disease spectrum; Flying personnel