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Spinal trauma

  • Field Management of Sports Injuries (J Kinderknecht, Section Editor)
  • Published:
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Abstract

The practice of spinal immobilization has existed since the 1960s under the premise that trauma victims with cervical spine injuries may suffer neurologic injury if moved without stabilization consisting of a rigid cervical collar and long spine board. Because of this assumption, it is of particular importance to assess for movement of the cervical spine with and without spinal immobilization. Over time, the on-field management of athletes with a mechanism consistent with spinal cord injury (SCI) has evolved and produced protocols that can be considered standard of care. Attempts to find evidencebased research to verify the necessity of a rigid collar and long spine board as the only option in athletic medicine for suspected SCI is difficult. As changes occur in the Emergency Medical Services standards, there will be opportunities to see how their processes relate to athletes and the rationale for immobilization on the field of play. Going forward, there could very well be a significant change in the approach to and management of the athlete down on the field of play with a suspected spinal cord injury.

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References

Papers of particular interest, published recently, have been highlighted as: • Of importance •• Of major importance

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Conflict of Interest

Jim Ellis, Brian Daniels and Ron Courson declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

No human or animal studies performed by the authors:

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

Human studies done by authors (but no animal studies)

This article does not contain any studies with animal subjects performed by any of the authors. With regard to the authors’ research cited in this paper, all procedures were followed in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 and 2008.

Animal studies done by authors (but no human studies)

This article does not contain any studies with human subjects performed by any of the authors.

With regard to the authors’ research cited in this paper, all institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Steadman Hawkins Clinic of the Carolinas, Greenville Health System, Greenville, SC, USA

    Jim Ellis

  2. Clinical Emergency Medicine, Department of Orthopedic Surgery, University of South Carolina School of Medicine – Greenville, 7 Independence Pointe, Suite 100, Greenville, SC, 29615, USA

    Jim Ellis

  3. Sports Medicine, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 30603, USA

    Ron Courson

  4. ProHEALTH Care Associates, Lake Success, NY, 11042, USA

    Brian Daniels

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  1. Jim Ellis
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  2. Ron Courson
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Correspondence to Jim Ellis.

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Ellis, J., Courson, R. & Daniels, B. Spinal trauma. Curr Rev Musculoskelet Med 7, 381–386 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12178-014-9235-x

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