Essentials of Aerospace Medicine: Clinical Foundations of Flight Physiology, Hypoxia, Barotrauma, Acceleration, and Aeromedical Certification (en Inglés)
Reseña del libro "Essentials of Aerospace Medicine: Clinical Foundations of Flight Physiology, Hypoxia, Barotrauma, Acceleration, and Aeromedical Certification (en Inglés)"
A working reference for the practitioners who make aeromedical decisions Aerospace medicine asks a question the rest of clinical practice does not. Not only what is wrong with this person and what will help, but whether this person can perform specified duties, in a specified environment, with an acceptable probability that nothing will go wrong at the moment when going wrong would be catastrophic. Essentials of Aerospace Medicine is built around that question. Across eighteen chapters it follows one repeated sequence: the exposure stated as a physical quantity, the structure that bears it, what the affected person can and cannot perceive, the measurement that actually predicts tolerance, and the disposition that follows. It explains how aeromedical judgments are reached rather than listing the thresholds they are measured against. What it covers The environment and the frame: the physiological zones of the atmosphere, and who decides what against which published standard. Pressure, oxygen, and the gas phase: the gas laws and alveolar arithmetic, hypoxia and useful consciousness, cabin pressurization and decompression, trapped gas and barotrauma, evolved gas and decompression sickness. Acceleration and orientation: acceleration physiology and protection, spatial disorientation and its illusions, motion sickness and vestibular adaptation. Performance and the physical environment: fatigue, sleep loss and circadian disruption; thermal stress, noise, vibration and ionizing radiation; vision and hearing in flight. Clinical disposition: cardiovascular, neurological and psychiatric, metabolic, respiratory and systemic conditions, and medication, substance use and flight status. Extension and integration: passenger fitness to fly, in-flight events and aeromedical transport; spaceflight physiology and commercial spaceflight participants; and a closing chapter on the reasoning method itself. How it is built Every chapter opens on a clinical case and closes by resolving it. Ninety full-color teaching figures, one per numbered section, each labeled and each with a commentary explaining what to look at and why. Display equations with every term defined, and a note on what each relationship does and does not predict. Decision panels and thirty-six reference tables throughout. Three appendices: drug classes by body system, generic names only and no doses; the units and conversions the field borrows from four others; and a directory for verifying any authority's current position. Who it is for Flight surgeons and aviation medical examiners in practice, aerospace medicine residents and fellows, and clinicians preparing for board examinations. It assumes working respiratory and cardiovascular physiology and general examination skills, and no prior knowledge of aviation or regulatory structure. What it is not. There are no practice questions; this is not a question bank. It does not reproduce any authority's certification standards, because those are revised continuously and the authority's own current publication is the only operative version. Where a number would be right in one jurisdiction and wrong in another, the book says so and sends you to the source. The reasoning transfers; the thresholds change.
