Long Spine Board Immobilization, an Overused Pre-hospital Intervention

Patients, that have suffered inconsiderate or penetrating damage that is significant enough to cause spinal anesthesia anesthesia injury, have always been treated by Emergency Medical go with full spinal immobilization. Most textbooks for paramedics and EMTs stress the importance of procuring manual c-spine immobilization, followed by c-collar application, and then placed on a spinal board with the uncomplainings head secured to the spinal board. This management of injury patients has long been the manufacture standard, but studies that prove patients benefit from the procedure are lacking and nigh studies have shown that spinal immobilization can actually be destructive to patients. While true spinal cord trauma is a devastating injury its actual incidence is extremely low. In a have that examined one one million million trauma victims, only 2% had true spinal cord damage and of that 2%, only 1% had neurological deficits of whatever kind. Moreover, there is little da ta to suggest that our efforts at spinal immobilization are even effective. (Santa Cruz County EMS consolidation Authority, 2012, para. 2)If only 2% of one million trauma victims had a true spinal cord injury that intend 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 read suggests that the difficulty of controlling the patients airway and decreased respiratory drive caused by the supine position of the patient could be add 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 h arm than good? journal of Trauma-injury Infection and Critical Care, 68(1), 115-120. Hamel, M. G. (2014). How leeward County (Fla.) EMS implemented a new paradigm of cervical spine management. Journal of Emergency Medical Services, 14(1), 62-63. Hauswald, M. (2013). A re-conceptualisation of acute spinal care. Emergency euphony 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