Pregnancy-related aeromedical retrievals in rural and remote Australia: national evidence from the Royal Flying Doctor Service

Table 1 Summary statistics for pregnancy-related transfers in Australia by operation area, Royal Flying Doctor Service, 2015–2019

		Total	Operation area				p-value
		Total	Centra (NT – SA)	Queenslan (QLD)	South East (NSW)	Western (WA)	p-value
	All^a	147,979	37,049	44,874	32,358	33,666
	Pregnancy ^a,b	4653	1125	1521	393	1614
	%	3.1%	3.0%	3.4%	1.2%	4.8%	< 0.001*
Years
2015–16	All^a	35,949	8758	10,856	7861	8457	< 0.001*
	Pregnancy ^a,b	1104	249	299	112	444
	%	3.1%	2.8%	2.8%	1.4%	5.3%
2016–17	All^a	36,567	9103	11,221	8023	8218	< 0.001*
	Pregnancy ^a,b	1133	252	371	120	390
	%	3.1%	2.8%	3.3%	1.5%	4.7%
2017–18	All^a	37,472	9686	11,249	8106	8428	< 0.001*
	Pregnancy ^a,b	1106	244	435	65	362
	%	3.0%	2.5%	3.9%	0.8%	4.3%
2018–19	All^a	37,991	9502	11,548	8368	8563	< 0.001*
	Pregnancy ^a,b	1310	380	416	96	418
	%	3.5%	4.0%	3.6%	1.1%	4.9%
	p-value	0.01^c	< 0.001^c	< 0.001^c	< 0.001^c	< 0.001^c
Women characteristics
Age in years	*Mean ± SD*	27.8 ± 6.1	27.4 ± 6.1	27.7 ± 6.0	26.6 ± 6.2	28.3 ± 6.3	< 0.07**
Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander
Yes	n (%)	1584 (34.0)	446 (39.6)	347 (22.8)	166 (42.2)	625 (38.7)	< 0.001†
No		2672 (57.4)	678 (60.3)	786 (51.7)	223 (56.7)	985 (61.0)
Not stated		397 (8.5)	1 (0.1)	388 (25.5)	4 (1.0)	4 (0.3)
Travel characteristics
Distance flown (n = 1132)	Median [p25-p75]	300 [211–464]	246 [213–347]	313 [232–472]	300 [239–380]	357 [196–564]	< 0.001††
Flight authorisation times (n = 3343)
0 am - 6 am	n (%)	369 (11.0)	114 (15.3)	102 (9.2)	29 (9.8)	124 (10.4)	< 0.001†
7 am - 7 pm		2353 (70.4)	478 (64.2)	832 (75.3)	213 (71.7)	830 (69.4)
8 pm - 11 pm		621 (18.6)	153 (20.5)	171 (15.5)	55 (18.5)	242 (20.2)

NT North Territory, SA South Australia, QLD Queensland, NSW New South Wales, WA Western Australia
a – Excluding repatriations
b – Females aged 15–49 years with an obstetric condition (ICD10) as the primary diagnosis for retrieval. Multiple transfer legs considered as single transfers
c – P-value for the comparison of the proportion of pregnancy-related retrievals between 2015 and 16 and 2018–19
* Chi-squared test of heterogeneity comparing the prevalence of pregnancy-related retrievals between operation areas
** ANOVA test for heterogeneity for the difference in maternal age according to the operation area
† Chi-squared test for heterogeneity for the distribution of indigenous status or flight authorisation times according to operation area
†† Kruskal-Wallis test for the difference in median distance flown according to the operation area

ISSN: 1472-6963