Injury and Illness Aboard an Antarctic Cruise Ship

Abstract

Most illnesses and injuries were due to the motion of the ship, and a large proportion of the passengers aboard the cruise ship in Antarctica were elderly. Injury among older passengers is of special concern.

Cruise ship pathologies in remote regions

“…Finally, we observed a quite low prevalence of trauma that was similar to that of previous studies [8][9][10]12]. The ship operates in a constantly moving environment that movement depends on the sea conditions, which can be rough especially in the southern seas.…”

“…Therefore it seems the best suitable choice for the practice of medicine in remote area where emergencies and primary care are encountered. First, it is worth noting that, compared to previous studies, the prevalence of seasickness in the present study may seem low [10,12]. This is certainly due to our criteria of inclusion.…”

“…Contrary to the present prospective study carried out on board a cruise ship during a sailing cruise around the world, with several stops [13], the previous reports were retrospective studies, based on data collected from the medical files of several cruise ships and focused on the passenger pathologies [8,10,12,16]. Herein, we studied the different pathologies encountered by the onboard population integrating passengers as well as staff, to better reflect the medical activity and the health status on an expedition ship in remote areas.…”

“…In addition, such cruise ships may encounter rough sea and climatic conditions far from the coastline, especially during transoceanic sailings jeopardising the immediate assistance of their passengers. Among them, while all the age groups are represented, there is often a high number of elderly [8][9][10] who present a higher risk of developing pathologies [11]. Therefore, different pathologies as well as emergencies can occur during these journeys and the physician and nurse have to be better prepared to manage them to provide the best care to the persons on board.…”

“…To ensure the quality of care on board French ships, a specific medical supply must be closely followed. Several retrospective studies investigated illnesses and injuries occurring among cruise ships passengers [8,10,12] and to the best of our knowledge, only one prospective study that monitored the whole population on board was conducted during a world cruise [13]. Some of them mainly focused on respiratory and digestive infections, which are the most commonly occurring on cruise ships.…”