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Showing Tag: "spine" (Show all posts)

Cervical collars and spinal cord injury protection

Posted by Matthew Mac Partlin on Friday, June 14, 2024, In : Clinical topics 


It’s not a black and white choice of collar or not, good or bad, routine or never.


 In the setting of an actual or probable cervical spine injury, providing stability control is widely accepted as better than providing no stabilization at all. It is then an issue of how best to provide that stability control.

The choice is dynamic, not “set and forget”. Two things are important in making one’s choice:
  • Being able to justify the choice based on a sound assessment of the evidence and how it...

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A tonic for the C-spine collar haterade

Posted by Matthew Mac Partlin on Friday, February 24, 2017, In : Conferences, courses & events 

I've been drinking from that fountain. Semi rigid c-spine collars have been receiving a drubbing in recent times (Search the c-spine collar tag over to the right of this page). And with good reason, I thought; though I will admit to not being quite ready to throw them away completely as I have been a long time practicioner of avoiding the "always/never" ultimatum.


Then trauma master, Karim Brohi, Professor of Trauma Sciences at Barts and the London School of Medicine, and Consultant in Trauma...

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FIA Institute CMO Seminar - Day 2

Posted by Matthew Mac Partlin on Friday, January 6, 2017, In : Conferences, courses & events 

The Christmas and New Year holidays are over and having spent some enjoyable time with the family poncing about, it's time to get back to work. Here is my summary of Day 2 of the FIA Institute Medicine in Motorsport CMO seminar held as part of the FIA AGA in Vienna at the beginning of December.

The first half of the day was composed of an opening speech by Jean Todt (which I missed) and four workshops. After lunch there were five free papers presented followed by the closing speech. After a so...

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FIA Institute CMO Seminar 2016 - Day 1

Posted by Matthew Mac Partlin on Wednesday, December 14, 2016, In : Conferences, courses & events 


Two weeks ago I was sitting in an apartment in the middle of the Vienna Naschmarkt, having flown in at 6am that morning from Australia to attend the biennial FIA Institute Medicine in Motorsport Chief Medical Officer's seminar. Traditionally, while there are a handful of exceptions, this is a fairly passive affair consisting of a series of talks and a couple of fairly didactic workshops (SMACC it is not).

Two years ago a small bonfire was lit when Dr Sean Petherbridge (CMO for the Abu Dhabi F...


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C-spine collar glory days

Posted by Matthew Mac Partlin on Wednesday, May 21, 2014, In : Clinical topics 


Sorry about this. I had planned to put up a post on the devolving role of the semi-rigid cervical spine collar two weeks ago. However, the more I read about it, the more I wrote and I ended up with a five page document. Waaay too long for a blog post!

So what I'm going to do instead is submit the original piece to a journal as an opinion piece and see if I can get it published. If that happens I'll put up a link to the article. In the meantime, as it may take some time to get through the edito...

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The value add of hard c-spine collars

Posted by Matthew Mac Partlin on Saturday, January 18, 2014, In : Clinical topics 
Posted by Matthew Mac Partlin on Monday, February 27, 2012

Courtesy of Cliff Reid's Resus.ME blog, here's an interesting article (Emerg Med J. 2012 Feb;29(2):104-7) that questions the added value of applying a hard c-spine collar to a trauma victim who is already secured on a spine board with head blocks and strapping. Balanced against the apparent lack of benefit is the potential for harm due to a greater limitation of mouth opening while a hard collar is in situ; though conventional practice...
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