Table 2:
Spinal motion restriction (SMR) prevalence and techniques used by emergency medical services (EMS) clinician suspicion for injury
| EMS clinician suspicion for injury | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall (N = 7,721) |
< 1% (N = 5,176) |
1–5% (N = 1,430) |
6–10% (N = 555) |
11–50% (N = 406) |
> 50% (N = 154) |
P-value | |
| Spinal Motion Restriction (SMR) Prevalence 1 | |||||||
| SMR used during EMS transport | 3,206 (41.5%) | 1,338 (25.9%) | 949 (66.4%) | 429 (77.3%) | 355 (87.4%) | 135 (87.7%) | <.0014 |
| Full SMR2 | 1,137 (35.5%) | 383 (28.6%) | 343 (36.1%) | 182 (42.4%) | 160 (45.1%) | 69 (51.1%) | <.0014 |
| Cervical collar only | 1,689 (52.7%) | 803 (60.0%) | 497 (52.4%) | 199 (46.4%) | 141 (39.7%) | 49 (36.3%) | <.0014 |
| Rigid longboard or Vacuum mattress only | 162 (5.1%) | 66 (4.9%) | 48 (5.1%) | 19 (4.4%) | 21 (5.9%) | 8 (5.9%) | 0.8865 |
| Towel only3 | 55 (1.7%) | 23 (1.7%) | 17 (1.8%) | 6 (1.4%) | 9 (2.5%) | 0 (0.0%) | 0.4145 |
| Other | 163 (5.1%) | 63 (4.7%) | 44 (4.6%) | 23 (5.4%) | 24 (6.8%) | 9 (6.7%) | 0.4604 |
| No SMR | 4,515 (58.5%) | 3,838 (74.1%) | 481 (33.6%) | 126 (22.7%) | 51 (12.6%) | 19 (12.3%) | <.0014 |
1
Percentages for specific types of SMR and reasons for SMR are out of those that had any SMR only.
2
Full SMR is defined as the application of cervical collar and rigid longboard or vacuum mattress.
3
Towel was defined by programmatically word searching for appropriate terms within the open text of ‘other specify’.
4
Pearson chi-square test of independence.
5
Fisher’s exact test of independence.