With regards to ventilation, the majority of patients were able to breathe spontaneously (n = 452; 89.7%), but some were ventilated with pressure-controlled Lapatinib ventilation (n =

49; 9.7%), synchronized intermittent mandatory ventilation (n = 2; 0.4%), or continuous positive airway pressure (n = 1; 0.2%). Regarding complications, one patient required endotracheal intubation (n = 1; 0.2%) and another experienced pulmonary embolism (n = 1; 0.2%), both during flying. Otherwise, transportation was tolerated well by the patients. The majority of journeys were carried out with an air ambulance (n = 391; 77.6%), but scheduled aircraft with regular seating (n = 62; 12.3%), a stretcher in a scheduled aircraft (n = 48; 9.6%), and a patient transport compartment (PTC), which is a medical transport facility offered on board scheduled Lufthansa aircrafts (n = 3; 0.6%), were also used. Sixteen different types of aircrafts were used in total; the top three were the Learjet 35 (n = 127; 25.2%), PA-42 400 (n = 97; 19.2%), and King Air 200 (n =

70; 13.9%). The majority of the flights were nonstop flights (n = 409; 81.2%). However, there were also some flights with one (n = 60; 11.9%), two (n = 23; 4.6%), GSK269962 chemical structure or three (n = 12, 2.4%) stopovers. The median flight distance was 1,655 km (IQR 858–22,637 km), with a median flight time of 180 min (IQR 115–255 min) and a median total of 370 min (IQR 256–525 min) including ground time. Different vehicles were used for transport from the destination airport to the final destination: regular ambulance (n = 266; 52.8%), emergency ambulance (n = 213; 42.3%), intensive care helicopter (n = 2; 0.4%), or intensive care ambulance (n = 1, 0.2%). The median distance from the airport to the final destination was 35 km (IQR 20–75 km). The top Acetophenone six countries of transport origin were Spain (n = 111; 22%), Turkey (n = 62; 12.3%), Italy (n = 35; 6.9%), Greece (n = 32; 6.4%),

Croatia (n = 16; 3.2%), and Poland (n = 15; 3%). Details on geographic data of transport origin are shown in Table 2. From a technical standpoint, the majority of cases were uneventful; nevertheless, there were a few specific minor problems (n = 8; 1.6%): the destination airport was changed during the flight in five cases due to changing weather conditions (n = 5; 1%), a pressure drop in the cabin (n = 1; 0.2%), and minor technical problems involving the landing gear (n = 2; 0.4%) were also documented. The costs per flight-minute and per kilometer were calculated for scheduled aircraft with regular seating to be 17.57 €/min and 1.74 €/km, for a stretcher in a scheduled aircraft 35.28 €/min and 3.29 €/km, and for an air ambulance 73.67 €/min and 7.49 €/km, respectively. The costs of the PTC cases were not evaluated because of the limited number of cases (n = 3; 0.6%). However, they have been previously described by Veldman and colleagues, who published data on PTC transport costs.