There is a fair amount of research about how uncomfortable spine boards are. There is also good evidence that if you lay on a board truly immobile for about 30 minutes you can demonstrate an early sacral decubitus.I do not believe there is any evidence as to their effectiveness, though. As best I can tell, there was a serious problem with spinal injuries in the 1960s. That is most likely because there was either no seat belt or a lap belt in automobiles of that era. The solution the orthopedic surgeons (who wrote the original book on how to care for crash victims) came up with was to do with spines what we do to all other broken bones: splint them with a board. Like most of the EMS interventions, there was no clinical trial, just a consensus opinion.
The only criticisms I have heard about vacuum mattresses is that they are expensive and they can be punctured. But unfortunately I have not seen a good trial that compares boards to mattresses in a real clinical setting.
Dave Thomson
David P. Thomson, MS, MD, FACEP
Associate Professor
Director, Transport Medicine
Medical Director, Telemedicine
Department of Emergency Medicine
Upstate Medical University
Syracuse, NY 13210
315.464.6219 (voice)
315.464.6220 (fax)
