Prehospital Interventions Provided by Helicopter Emergency Medical Services Teams: A Scoping Review

The prehospital interventions provided by helicopter emergency medical services are crucial for improving rescue efficiency and success rates. We aimed to assess and describe the literature on prehospital rescue interventions provided by helicopter emergency medical services personnel worldwide.

A comprehensive search was conducted via PubMed, MEDLINE, Embase, Web of Science, and CINAHL from January 1, 2010, to September 30, 2025, to identify studies for patients of any age involving helicopter prehospital interventions. Two authors independently completed the data extraction and quality assessment.

Among 10,731 records, 80 studies were included with a total sample size of 3,343,377 cases, of whom 963,779 were transported by helicopter emergency medical services. Of the 84 identified prehospital interventions provided by helicopter emergency medical services crews, 18 high-frequency core emergency interventions were extracted and categorized into 4 systems: circulatory, respiratory, locomotor, and other. The most frequent interventions were endotracheal intubation, drug treatment, and cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Subgroup analyses of "trauma patients only," "cardiac arrest only," and "trauma and non-trauma patients" indicated that advanced airway management, hemodynamic stabilization, and supportive drug therapy were consistently critical across all groups.

The helicopter emergency medical services teams provided a wide spectrum of intervention services. Evaluating the interventions is important to gain insight into uniform practices, terminology, and documentation. Identifying intervention outcomes and efficacy is crucial for guiding future research and developing evidence-based, standardized helicopter emergency intervention guidelines.