Long Spine Board Immobilization, an Overused Pre-hospital Intervention

Patients, that have suffered blunt or penetrating trauma that is probatory enough to cause spinal anesthesia anesthesia injury, have always been treated by Emergency Medical Services with full spinal immobilization. Most textbooks for paramedics and EMTs test the importance of procuring manual c-spine immobilization, followed by c-collar application, and then placed on a spinal board with the patients head secured to the spinal board. This wariness of trauma patients has long been the industry standard, but studies that prove patients benefit from the mental process are lacking and some studies have shown that spinal immobilization butt very be detrimental to patients. While true spinal heap trauma is a devastating injury its actual incidence is highly low. In a study that examined one million trauma victims, save 2% had true spinal cord damage and of that 2%, altogether 1% had neurological deficits of any kind. Moreover, there is little data to put forward that our e fforts at spinal immobilization are even effective. (Santa Cruz County EMS Integration Authority, 2012, para. 2)If precisely 2% of one million trauma victims had a true spinal cord injury that means 998,000 patients received full spinal immobilization that was unnecessary when only 2,000 warranted spinal immobilization. The use of long board spinal restriction as a precautionary measure should be reconsidered.Studies conducted by Chang et al. (2010) concluded that patients that suffered from penetrating trauma that were treated with spinal immobilization actually had higher mortality rates. The study suggests that the difficulty of controlling the patients airway and decreased respiratory drive caused by the supine locating of the patient could be contributing factors in the mortality rates... ... 609-615. Chang, D. C.,Efron, D. T., Haut,E. R., Haider, A. H., Kalish, B. T.,Kieninger, A. N., & Stevens, K. A., (2010). Spine immobilization in penetrating trauma more harm than good? ledger of Trauma-injury Infection and Critical Care, 68(1), 115-120. Hamel, M. G. (2014). How Lee County (Fla.) EMS implemented a new range of cervical spine management. Journal of Emergency Medical Services, 14(1), 62-63. Hauswald, M. (2013). A re-conceptualisation of discerning spinal care. Emergency Medicine Journel, 30(9), 720-723.McHugh, T. P., & Taylor, J. P. (2009). Unnecessary out-of-hospital use of full spinal immobilization. Academy of Emergency Medicine, 5(3), 278-280.Santa Cruz County EMS Integration Authority. (2012). New thinking on spinal immobilization. Retrieved from http//www.acphd.org/media/311913/santa%20cruz-%20new%20thinking%20about%20spine%20injures.pdf