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Patsy Moy

The fact that a 10-year-old Hong Kong girl could fall victim to 'economy-class syndrome' has surprised an expert who has just published research on the condition.

Dr John Scurr, a consultant vascular surgeon at University College and Middlesex Hospitals in London, said the child was the youngest sufferer he had heard of.

'We have seen people in their 20s - the youngest is 22 - but I cannot think of any patients under the age of 20. I am surprised you have a 10-year-old patient in Hong Kong,' he said yesterday.

Dr Scurr said if a person had a low protein C level - as was the case with the 10-year-old - the risk of suffering deep-vein thrombosis (DVT), or economy-class syndrome, was higher.

But he sought to calm parents' fears over the risks to children on long-haul flights.

'It is extremely unusual,' he said. 'First of all, DVT does not affect the majority of people anyway. For a child to be affected, it would be almost as rare as winning the national lottery . . . It is very unusual and very rare. So parents do not need to worry.'

But he suggested parents give children plenty of water to drink when flying - one of the recommendations to prevent DVT.

The surgeon said he would be interested in studying the case if his Hong Kong counterparts could reveal more details.

DVT fears were heightened in October last year when 28-year-old British bride-to-be Emma Christofferson collapsed and died after a 20-hour flight to London from Sydney, where she had attended the Olympic Games.

The latest research by Dr Scurr and his team, published in the British medical journal Lancet  on Friday, adds to evidence that economy-class syndrome exists.

Dr Scurr and a team from University College London studied 200 passengers who travelled on flights of eight hours or more, 84 of whom were given special compression stockings to wear during the journey.

After the journey, all were assessed for DVT in their calves using ultrasound. The ultrasound did not identify DVT in any of those who wore the stockings, but did identify the condition in 10 per cent of those who did not.

'We believe the thrombi detected in our study were attributable to long-haul air travel,' the researchers said. 'Environmental changes that take place during long-haul air travel may provoke calf vein thrombosis. Our findings strongly suggest that stockings also protect against symptomless DVT after air travel.'

But Dr Scurr last night declined to confirm whether compression stockings could help prevent fatal blood clotting in minors during long flights because no scientific tests has been done on children.

'It would also be very difficult to fit compression stockings on very small children because they are not made for them,' he said. 'Also, my impression is children do not usually sit still for long hours, they jump up and down and move around, so they tend to fulfil one of the criteria for preventing DVT - exercise.'

Dr Scurr estimated that as many as 1,000 people suffered from DVT in Britain every year. Although there are no worldwide figures, he warned of an increasing number of cases in Asia.

'I suspect at the end of the day, everybody will be potentially at risk if they sit for a long period of time doing nothing,' he said.

In a commentary also published in Lancet,  Jack Hirsh, from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, questioned the findings.  'It would be premature to legislate that airlines change the seating configuration or introduce other costly procedures until there is more information on the extent of the problem and on the effectiveness of much simpler preventative measures,' he said.

In March, a World Health Organisation meeting of scientists, aviation experts and air authorities launched an investigation into the issue after a series of deaths among passengers who had stepped off long-haul flights. Some airlines are already supplying compression stockings on long-distance flights in a bid to reduce the DVT risk.

HIGH13GET



Researchers believe their findings demonstrate link between deep-vein thrombosis and long-haul flights