ArticleJournal of the American College of Emergency Physicians open2024
Change from semi-rigid to soft collars for prehospital management of trauma patients: An observational study.
Article in Journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians open, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Spinal Motion Restriction for Possible Traumatic Cervical Spine Injury: A Scoping Review.Cureus · 2025Review
- Change from semi-rigid to soft collars for prehospital management of trauma patients: An observational study.Journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians open · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Objectives: Protection of the cervical spine is recommended following multisystem injury. In 2021, Ambulance Victoria changed clinical practice guidelines to apply soft collars instead of semi-rigid collars for suspected cervical spine injury. The aim of this study was to describe associated changes in imaging practices and diagnoses of pressure sores, hospital acquired pneumonia, and spinal cord injury. Methods: A retrospective pre- and postintervention study was conducted including all consecutive patients that presented to an adult major trauma center in Melbourne, Australia with a cervical collar placed by emergency medical services over two 3-month periods. Results: There were 1762 patients included. A computed tomography (CT) of the cervical spine was performed in 795 (88.4%) patients in the semi-rigid collar period and 810 (93.8%) in the soft collar period ( Conclusions: Following a change from prehospital semi-rigid collars to soft collars, more patients were investigated with a CT scan and more frequent clearance of the cervical spine occurred in the ED. There were no differences in the rates of spinal cord injuries, pressure sores or hospital acquired pneumonia, but the study was underpowered to detect significant differences. The practice of soft collars for prehospital care of patients with suspected neck injury requires ongoing surveillance.
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