2023 turned out to be a very busy year for the Polish Medical Air Rescue crews, in total, they completed 11,935 missions. HEMS helicopters carried out 11,549 missions, including 10,329 emergency flights and 1,220 inter-hospital transports. 386 transports were carried out by plane.
In 2023, 7,396 patients were transported by LPR helicopters and worth noting is that the total number of people helped by LPR doctors and paramedics/nurses was 9,412, including 1,324 children. Invariably, the most common reason for calls to HEMS crews were traffic accidents and assistance to their victims, 1,951 flights, and 126 trips to help people who have been hit by cars. The second cause of call outs were strokes, 1,512, with crews helping people with sudden cardiac arrest 975 times. 971 patients suffered various types of injuries, including 693 cases of falls from a height. However, 597 times the helicopter approached people who were unconscious, the list of reasons for calls includes: myocardial infarction (395), thermal burns (369), chest pain (351), shortness of breath (270), seizures (223) and fainting (286).
HEMS helicopters, carrying out their statutory tasks, logged almost 8,950 hours of flight time in 2023. The total flight time of all LPR aircraft, including training and technical flights, was 9,489 hours.
HEMS bases that completed the most missions operating 24/7, in Kraków (937) and Warsaw (905), operating from 7am to 8pm Katowice (662), Poznań (580), Szczecin (575), Bydgoszcz (556) and Lublin (555).
The busiest day was on 17 July 2023 on July 17 with the helicopters performing a total of 58 missions, plus the maximum number of departures in one day was eight, this was achieved by crews in Warsaw, Krakow and Wrocław.