25 Mar 2025
Trauma never stops. In 2024, this was never more relevant. Sadly, London’s Air Ambulance’s unique team of expert doctors, paramedics and pilots treated more patients than ever before.
For the first time, the average number of patients we attended to each day went up to six and we treated 2,058 patients in the year. This is 51 patients more than the previous year and marks the busiest-yet year for our vital service.
On the worst day of someone’s life, our medics can provide hope for the patient and their loved ones. Treating these patients at the roadside included administering 358 rapid sequence intubations, 228 blood transfusions, 176 femoral arterial lines, 47 thoracotomies and three uses of REBOA – an innovative procedure using a balloon to control internal bleeding. Most of these procedures only our crew can provide on scene in London.
We attended missions in the boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Westminster most throughout the year, closely followed by the boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark. How many times did we attend to your borough? You can check our mission map below.
Assault was the most common mechanism of injury, resulting in 488 patients (24 per cent). Transport-related injuries resulted in 357 patients (17 per cent), falls 301 patients (15 per cent), medical-related injuries 273 (13 per cent) and accidents 173 (eight per cent). There were also 466 patients who had other or unknown mechanisms of injury (23 per cent), which include burn injuries, crush injuries and industrial accidents.
Throughout the entire year, we only flew a patient to hospital 16 times. Flying a patient to hospital is not our main purpose: when people in London suffer life-threatening traumatic injury, our teams can provide them with the help they need, performing innovative and complex medical procedures on scene. Once the patient is ready to be transported, we accompany them in a road ambulance to, usually, the nearest major trauma centre. In 2024, 606 of our patients (41.8 per cent) were taken to The Royal London Hospital by road, 396 patients (27.3 per cent) were taken to St Mary’s Hospital, 216 patients (14.9 per cent) to King’s College and 172 (11.9 per cent) to St George’s.
We are dedicated to providing London with world-class medical care when a life is on the line. But we’re a charity, with 95 per cent of our funding reliant on people like you. We've launched a new organisational strategy to ensure our service continues to innovate and can be there for London, today, tomorrow, always. Support us now, to help us save the person tomorrow that we just couldn't save today.