Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Face Mask Effects Of Co2, Heart Rate, Respiration Rate, And Oxygen Saturation On Instructor Pilots, Andrew R. Dattel, Nicola M. O'Toole, Guillermina Lopez, Kenneth P. Byrnes

Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic has required people to take new measures to mitigate the spread of the communicable virus. Guidelines from health organizations, government offices, and universities have been disseminated. Adherence to these guidelines cannot be more critical for flight training. This study explored the effects face masks had on CO2, heart rate, respiration rate, and oxygen saturation while wearing a face mask at an oxygen level simulated to 5,000 feet. Thirty-two instructor pilots (IP) volunteered to participate in the study. IPs spent 90 minutes in a normobaric chamber while wearing a cloth face mask or a paper face mask. Participants …

Physiological Effects During Aerobatic Flights On Science Astronaut Candidates, Pedro Llanos, Diego M. Garcia

Publications

Spaceflight is considered the last frontier in terms of science, technology, and engineering. But it is also the next frontier in terms of human physiology and performance. After more than 200,000 years humans have evolved under earth’s gravity and atmospheric conditions, spaceflight poses environmental stresses for which human physiology is not adapted. Hypoxia, accelerations, and radiation are among such stressors, our research involves suborbital flights aiming to develop effective countermeasures in order to assure sustainable human space presence. The physiologic baseline of spaceflight participants is subject to great variability driven by age, gender, fitness, and metabolic reserve. The objective of …

General Aviation Hypoxia And Reporting Statistics, Timothy B. Holt, Jacqueline Luedtke, Claire Schindler

Publications

“All too often, pilots tell me they don't need physiological training because they don't fly that high. The statement points out the general feelings of a large majority of the aviation population. I suppose then the burning question is ‘why do we still have aircraft accidents?’” (Boshers, 2015). To this day there are no statistics on how often general aviation pilots experience hypoxia during everyday operations. General aviation pilots (i.e. non-commercial operations) were chosen for this study because:

• Little regulation regarding flight physiology training
• General attitude of invulnerability towards hypoxia
• No requirement to report hypoxia or similar events