Originally Posted by
nagginpilotwife
My hubby has a friend who just went to work for a company back in April. Last week, he felt faint while running and stopped. Later he was playing with his kids and collapsed. He went to the hospital was shocked and flown medevac to another hospital. He lost his Medical because of this.
The dr. told him he might be able to get it back if they figure out what is going on. Right now they have no idea. Wanted to see what yall think about this.
Also, he has a training contract with this company. Can they hold him to it?
Regarding the training contract, they usually let you off the hook for things beyond your control like medical issues, but I suppose you would have to read the fine print. I doubt the company would even try to enforce it under the circumstances.
I'm not a Dr., but here's what I remember....
Anything involving loss of consciousness will result in loss of medical. You can get the medical back if the problem is:
a) Diagnosed (ie not a mystery).
b) Corrected to a degree acceptable to the FAA.
The best case here is that the guy had the flu, or had heatstroke or something like that...those issues would self-resolve.
Worst case is an actual heart attack involving blocked arteries...the big problem for medical certification is that they won't give you a medical (at least not a first or second) if your arteries are blocked more than 50%. Normally they don't check for this, so you could go your whole career with a arteries blocked 70% and never know. Unfortunately if that caused a heart attack then 100% blockage existed...and the FAA will want full tests which are unlikely to show that the guys arteries are 50% or better. Also, it's not easy (or even possible) to open up arteries to that degree once they get blocked. If this is case, he probably needs to find a new, low-stress career.
A heart attack involving electrical rythm problems only (no blocked arteries) might be treatable to the FAA's satisfaction (beta blockers, etc). This probably requires that the heart wasn't badly damaged by the event.
Your friend needs to talk to an aviation medicine specialist (other than his AME, who is duty-bound to look after the FAA's interests and not the pilot's). Here's a link to one such company (which I have used):
http://www.aviationmedicine.com/