The Effect on Age, Body Weight, Height, Body Mass Index and Smoking to Coagulation Factor VII, VIII and Fibrinogen in Pilots

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The pilots with cardiovascular events have a possibility for a risk of suffering from sudden incapacitation which is closely related to flying safety. The coagulation factors such as fibrinogen, factor VII, and factor VIII are possibly related to cardiovascular events. Several studies for general population have shown that an increase of those coagulation factors with age, a correlation of Factor VII and fibrinogen with BMI, and of fibrinogen with smoking. However, this study is to find out whether pilots' age, body weight, body mass index (BMI) and smoking are related to the baseline measurement of coagulation factor VII, factor VIII and fibrinogen. METHOD: Samples were taken from 21 pilots from Asiana Airlines 11 smokers and 10 non-smokers. In order to measure the relationship between age, body weight, BMI, and the coagulation factors, Pearson correlation was used in this analysis. Independent two sampled t-test was used to analyze the correlation between smoking and the coagulation factors. RESULTS: Mean age, mean height, mean body weight and mean BMI of pilots were examined 38 years, 171.81 cm, 70.67 Kg and 23.94 Kg/m(2). Mean fibrinogen, mean factor VII, and mean factor VIII were also obtained 236.0 mg/dl, 92.93%, and 60.16%. The coagulation factor VII, factor VIII and fibrinogen were not significant related to age, body weight, BMI, smoking of pilots. CONCLUSION: This study has no correlation between age, body weight, BMI, smoking and the coagulation factors because the age of this study does not have pilots with over 60 years old and healthy behaviors (e.g., exercise, smoking, drinking, etc.) of most pilots are relatively well.