Scotland's Charity Air Ambulance flies to the rescue 967 times in 2022

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Scotland’s Charity Air Ambulance (SCAA) is beginning its tenth year of mercy flights and a look back at data from last year shows 2022 was the busiest year ever.Sadly, the new figures also point to serious road accidents in Scotland becoming ever more frequent.Using both helicopter air ambulances and rapid response vehicles at both Perth and Aberdeen airport bases, SCAA has seen a sharp increase in the number of emergency call-outs to road traffic collisions – there were 187 last year.In 2022, these accounted for more than half of all trauma cases, an increase of 39 per cent on the previous year.The country’s only charity air ambulance service marks 10 years since its founding on May 22, 2023.Last year it responded to 967 call outs – a 19 per cent increase on the previous year.A valued integral part of Scotland’s emergency response network, SCAA plays a vital role in getting paramedics and specialist teams quickly to the scene of serious illness and injury, providing life-saving care in the air and transferring patients onwards to appropriate hospitals.Figures just released show that, during 2022, the charity airlifted more patients than ever before to often-critical hospital care – up by eight per cent.And with traumatic injury cases continuing to dominate SCAA’s workload (38 per cent), nearly two- thirds of all airlifted patients were flown to the country’s four major trauma centres at Aberdeen, Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh.Besides the leap in road collision injuries, other trauma emergencies attended included falls (94), industrial accidents (26) and equestrian-related injuries (21).Throughout the past year, SCAA’s helicopters airlifted advanced medical teams directly to the scene of 134 emergencies, delivering