<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>This paper will examine the impacts of obesity in aviation medicine. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has described the problems of obesity and being overweight as one of the greatest public health challenges of the 21<sup>st</sup> century (<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="j_asam-2020-001_ref_001">1</xref>) and this will certainly lead to increasing numbers of obese aviators (or potential aviators) presenting for medical certification. These people may not realise the impact their increased weight could have on their flying career and is often going to be an incidental finding in their examination rather than the specific problem they present with. This leads to the question for the medical examiner, does being overweight/obese matter in aviation and how might it increase a person’s risk of incapacitation in the cockpit?</p></abstract>

This paper will examine the impacts of obesity in aviation medicine. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has described the problems of obesity and being overweight as one of the greatest public health challenges of the 21st century (1) and this will certainly lead to increasing numbers of obese aviators (or potential aviators) presenting for medical certification. These people may not realise the impact their increased weight could have on their flying career and is often going to be an incidental finding in their examination rather than the specific problem they present with. This leads to the question for the medical examiner, does being overweight/obese matter in aviation and how might it increase a person’s risk of incapacitation in the cockpit?

OBESITY IN AVIATION MEDICINE

Journal of the Australasian Society of Aerospace Medicine

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

{"subtitle":"A Growing Concern?","article-title":"OBESITY IN AVIATION MEDICINE"}

This paper will examine the impacts of obesity in aviation medicine. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has described the problems of obesity and being...

OBESITY IN AVIATION MEDICINE

Article Category: review-article

Published Online: Jan 29, 2021

Page range: 1 - 6

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21307/asam-2020-001

© 2021 Catriona Balfour., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.