OBJECTIVE Prehospital personnel who lack advanced airway management training must rely on basic techniques when transporting unconscious trauma patients. The supine position is associated with a loss of airway patency when compared to lateral recumbent positions. Thus, an inherent conflict exists between securing an open airway using the recovery position and maintaining spinal immobilization i...

BACKGROUND We aimed to evaluate the effect of early pelvic binder use in the emergency management of suspected pelvic trauma, compared with the conventional stepwise approach. METHODS We enrolled trauma patients with initial stabilization using a pelvic binder when suspecting pelvic injury. The inclusion criteria were traumatic injury requiring a trauma team and at least one of the following:...

BACKGROUND Spinal injury in children is rare, and poses many difficulties in management. AIMS To ascertain the prevalence of spinal injury within the paediatric trauma population, and to assess relative risks of spinal injury according to age, conscious level, injury severity score (ISS), and associated injuries. METHODS Spine injured children were identified from the UK Trauma Audit & Rese...

o bjective: to describe the epidemiological characteristics of patients with cervical spine injury admitted to rajaee hospital, shiraz, iran. m e thods: this cross-sectional study includes all patients admitted with impression of cervical column injury with or without cervical cord injury from october 2009 to march 2012 to our level i trauma center in shiraz. we recorded the patients’ character...

Introduction: Pneumocephalus is air or gas located in the intracranial cavity. Head trauma is the most common cause of pneumocephalus, with the majority of cases resulting from sinus and basilar skull fractures. A small number of case reports have been published describing pneumocephalus after cervical and thoracic penetrating injuries. To our knowledge, we report the first case of severe pneum...

Although CT continues to be of great importance in the evaluation of the spine after acute trauma, MRI is gaining acceptance and is considered indispensable in some situations. At our institution, in all patients who have suffered head trauma and have an immobilized cervical spine, a CT of the cervical spine is obtained at the same time as the head CT. In these patients, 3 mm thick spiral secti...

Cervical spine surgery is one of the most commonly performed spine surgeries in the United States, and 90% of the cases are related to degenerative cervical spine disease (the rest to cervical spine trauma and/or instability). The airway management for cervical spine surgery represents a crucial step in the anesthetic management to avoid injury to the cervical cord. The crux for upper airway ma...