Korean J Aerosp Environ Med.  2015 Apr;25(1):7-10.

Cancer Treatment in Flight Crews

• Jang J

Abstract

Flight crews are exposed to unnatural environment with high altutude and life-style factors that may influence their health status and mortality. Epidemiologic cohort studies of cancer incidence and mortality among flight crew is not quite different from general population and sometimes even better and treatment policy is generally same with the population. But in the matter of back-to-work after treatment it is much different from usual occupation in that working environment of flight crew is much more severe and hazadous. So flight crew who suffers from cancer should be handled differently because of their profession. Flight crew who suffers from cancer is supposed to be excluded from duty at least 1 year after the completion of anticancer treatment irrespective of its modality such as surgery, radiation or chemotherapy. During that time of grounding the crew patient will have recovery time from side effects of treatment and he or she will have surveillence check of cancer recurrence. After that time Flight crew who is proven to be cured from cancer can be allowed to back-to-work with condition. Because anticancer chemotherapy is applied to the most cancers the residual side effects should be taken into account when determining back-to-work. Nowadays long term cancer survivors become common so long term side effects of chemotherapy such as secondary cancer, chronic residual organ damage such as cardiac toxicity or neuronal damage is worthy to be concerned. While cancer is a fatal disease we achieve improvement of cancer treatment and developments in aviation technology as well. Those lead us to face with changing standards for flight crew who have cancer treatment.

Keyword

Flight crew; Cancer Treatment