Summer travel season is coming up, so I thought I’d share a
quick word about travel safety.
Summer travel season is coming up, so I thought I’d share a quick word about travel safety.
I trust all of you are smart enough to put your seat backs in the upright position and place your tray tables up, and that most of you are even wise enough to turn off electronic devices such as cell phones, unlike the dufus sitting next to me on my last flight who figured the 10 minutes before landing would be a good time to sweet-talk his girlfriend into picking him up at the airport.
However, if you’re going on a long-distance flight this summer – particularly if you’re wedged into coach class with the passenger in front of you leaned back so far you’re tempted to re-do her makeup in, say, Sharpie – remember to get up and walk around every once in a while.
Deep Vein Thrombosis, also nicknamed “economy class syndrome” by some researchers, is a condition caused when blood cells stick together and clot, generally in the leg, over long periods of inactivity. In most cases, the blood clots shake loose and dissolve as you get up to do things throughout the day, but on long-haul airline flights, the clot may grow, causing painful swelling in the leg.
Should a piece of the clot or the entire thing break off and travel to the brain or lungs, you could be in trouble. These clots can kill, and they’re often underreported since DVT can take days or weeks to strike.
DVT was brought to the forefront of world health debates for a fleeting moment in the fall of 2000, when 28-year-old Emma Christoffersen, a pert, fit Australian woman collapsed and died after a 20-hour flight from Melbourne to London’s Heathrow Airport. She fell just yards from the flight gate and never regained consciousness.
The tragedy brought conflicting studies on the topic to light. One British study, published in the medical journal “The Lancet,” found as many as one in 10 long-haul travelers, regardless of risk factors for DVT like cardiac disease, cancer and blood clotting disorders, developed symptoms of the disease that could be picked up with an ultrasound machine.
A well-respected Australian doctor claimed that as few as one in 2 million people suffered from the disease.
The World Health Organization even stepped in to moderate the debate, but research failed to find hard numbers related to the condition, according to the Oxford-based Aviation Health Institute.
Then there was the fact that DVT doesn’t always take place in the air, either. Studies published in the New Zealand Medical Journal and South Korea’s Yonsei Medical Journal point to a newly identified form of DVT called “eThrombosis.” In both cases, sufferers collapsed after spending extended periods of time in front of a computer.
Luckily, both of the study patients interviewed survived, but other DVT victims have not been as lucky. Journalist David Bloom died of the condition after enduring weeks of pain while working as an embedded reporter during the invasion of Baghdad and sleeping in cramped quarters aboard a U.S. Army tank. He was 39.
The most saddening thing is that the condition is very preventable. Doctors urge patients to take an aspirin before long-haul flights, as the medication thins a patient’s blood. For those on the ground, the prevention measures are even simpler: Walk around.
Computer users should take short, frequent breaks to avoid not only eThrombosis, but eye strain, fatigue and other maladies associated with long sedentary periods.
If you can’t remember to take breaks on your own, you can download a computer program to help with the task. GeekAlarm.com offers a paced rest program that can either passively remind users that it’s time to take a break or aggressively shut down their ability to work for pre-selected time periods ranging from two to 15 minutes.
That, or you could just keep an eye on the clock. Yeah, like you don’t do it already.
