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Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft

bmj.com

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Re: Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft

#101

Post by dreamcompiler »

Reason077 wrote: post #19
oh_sigh wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done over 900 jumps so I can fill you in, no references ATM because I'm on my phone. If you jump with a parachute, you will see chance of death go from 0% at zero feet, to approximately 100% at 35 feet. From there, it will remain near 100% until you reach about 600 feet, which is about the minimum distance it takes a parachute to open. Above 1000 feet and chance of death floors out near 0%

”approximately 100% at 35 feet” Not sure about that. Although chance of death would be significant, there are many cases of people surviving falls from greater heights.

Some people survive such falls but they typically require extensive surgery and long hospital stays. They often suffer serious long-term cognitive or physical deficits. It's not a fun way to survive.

Re: Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft

#103

Post by simonh »

joker3 wrote: post #3
nabla9 wrote: post #2

Remember to reard the linked editorial for context: https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2018/12/13/we-jumped-from-planes-w... > We conducted the PARACHUTE trial to illustrate the perils of interpreting trials outside of context. When strong beliefs about the standard of care exist in the community, often only low risk patients are enrolled in a trial, which can unsalvageably bias the results, akin to jumping from an aircraft w…

It's also essential to read the first cited article ( https://www.bmj.com/content/327/7429/1459?ijkey=3b8c1a70a8d2... ) which very much inspired this paper and is also quite a bit funnier.

>We think that everyone might benefit if the most radical protagonists of evidence based medicine organised and participated in a double blind, randomised, placebo controlled, crossover trial of the parachute.

Classic.

Re: Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft

#105

Post by flippyhead »

> A key strength of the PARACHUTE trial was that it was designed and initially powered to detect differences in the combination of death and major traumatic injury. Although the use of softer endpoints, such as levels of fear before and after jumping, or its surrogates, such as loss of urinary continence, could have yielded more power to detect an effect of parachutes, we believe that that our selection of bias-resistant endpoints that are meaningful to all patients increases the clinical relevance of the trial.

I love how much detail into which they go.

Re: Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft

#107

Post by akavel »

ainiriand wrote: post #98
yason wrote: post #92

I've always known the parachute manufacturers mostly ride on fear, uncertainty and doubt on this. They ruthlessly cash in on people's lack of knowledge and fear of death, advertising parachutes as a safer option which people buy because it's like insurance; if you'd happen to fall, you'd at least want to feel having prepared. So I'm glad to hear there's now some scientific evidence pointing to the futility of parachu…

I suspect that landing on water has no discernible effect on the health of the suspect. And he will be completely soaked, so avoid jumping over water and always try to land on land.

Notably, as to choosing land vs. water when falling from high altitude, see the ever fresh: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11748528

Re: Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft

#108

Post by TuringTest »

Reason077 wrote: post #14
vamos_davai wrote: post #7

Would you indicate this is a satirical article? Half the time I was looking for jump height or understanding if adding parachutes to commercial aircraft that suddenly experienced breakage such as a missile would improve passenger survival.

There is obviously an element of satire, but are the authors are also trying to make some sort of statement about clinical trials?

Isn't satire always trying to make a serious statement? Or at least, good satire?

Re: Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft

#109

Post by avar »

Fomite wrote: post #89
jxramos wrote: post #70

> PArticipation in RAndomized trials Compromised by widely Held beliefs aboUt lack of Treatment Equipoise (PARACHUTE) That has got to be one of the most torturous acronyms I've ever seen. That's a bit of a stretch.

Oh my sweet summer child... Biomedicine has gone whole hog into torturing acronyms to make useful sounding cohort names.

Also NASA. They just landed InSight on Mars. Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport.

Most of the names are something where they're clearly trying to squeeze out a cute cohort name at all costs.

Re: Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft

#110

Post by avar »

Johnny555 wrote: post #53
oh_sigh wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done over 900 jumps so I can fill you in, no references ATM because I'm on my phone. If you jump with a parachute, you will see chance of death go from 0% at zero feet, to approximately 100% at 35 feet. From there, it will remain near 100% until you reach about 600 feet, which is about the minimum distance it takes a parachute to open. Above 1000 feet and chance of death floors out near 0%

35 ft is a little pessimistic, the LD50 is 10.5m (~35 ft) for those with head and chest injuries, and 22.4m (~75 ft) for those without. Which is surprisingly far. In patients with head and chest injuries, a 50% mortality rate was estimated to occur at falls from 10.5m, compared to 22.4m in those without injuries to head or chest https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22860503

Studies like this don't provide good data points for "if you jump[...]" as the GP mentioned. The data is gathered from people who either accidentally fell, or intentionally jumped not intending to live.

They can't just randomly recruit people and have them jump to their near-certain deaths from ever increasing heights due to pesky medical ethics boards.

This matters because a person who's forced to jump from a significant height out of desperation (e.g. to avoid a fire) is likely to take certain precautions that people who accidentally fall don't take, and those trying to kill themselves intentionally avoid.

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