Contemporary Scientific Perspectives on the Professional Health of Aviation Specialists (Review)

Maintaining the professional longevity of pilots and air traffic controllers is a priority strategic objective for civil aviation. Traditional occupational medicine approaches, based on identifying nosological forms of occupational diseases, have demonstrated limited effectiveness in the context of the profound transformation of work patterns. The aim of this study is to conduct a systematic analysis of the concepts of professional health of aviation specialists and identify the factors influencing it based on contemporary research works. An analytical review of domestic and international publications in the PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and eLIBRARY databases over the last 10 years was conducted, including earlier fundamental sources. The study shows that aviation medicine is undergoing a conceptual transition from the legal category of “occupational disease” to the medico-biological concept of “professional health” as a state of the body’s functional reserves. A global shift in the risk profile is revealed, from the dominance of physical environmental factors (noise, vibration) to organizational and psychophysiological determinants such as shift work, chronic desynchronosis, and exposure to an obesogenic environment. Pilots and air traffic controllers belong to the same risk profile, where the limiting factor for professional longevity is the depletion of adaptive reserves, leading to cardiometabolic disorders and premature aging against the background of accumulated “biological debt”. High cognitive complexity of work provides neurotraining, contributing to the development of cognitive reserve and long-term neuroprotection, if adequate recovery is ensured. The need for a paradigm shift in medical flight support is substantiated: a shift from the “expert deselection” strategy to the proactive management of modifiable risk factors (sleep hygiene, nutritional status, physical activity) and dynamic monitoring of employees’ functional reserves. Implementation of this approach is key for maintaining the human resources potential of civil aviation and ensuring flight safety.