Maintaining immobilization devices on trauma patients during chest and pelvic X-ray: a feasibility study

Most trauma systems and traumatic spinal injury guidelines mandate spinal stabilization from the site of injury to a radiological confirmation or refutal of spinal injury. Vacuum mattresses have been advocated for patients in need of prehospital spinal stabilization.

To investigate the effect of different vacuum mattresses on standard resuscitation bay conventional radiography of chest and pelvis, especially regarding artefacts.

We used a mobile X-ray machine to perform chest and pelvic conventional radiography on an anthropomorphic whole-body phantom with a trauma transfer board, three different vacuum mattresses, and without any stabilization device. The vacuum mattresses were investigated in activated, deactivated, and stretched after deactivated states. Two radiologists assessed the artefacts independently. Agreement was measured using kappa coefficient.

All radiographs were of good technical quality and fully diagnostic. With the exception of one disagreed occurrence, artefacts were seen to hamper clinical judgment exclusively with activated vacuum mattresses. There was substantial agreement on artefact assessment. The observed agreement was 0.82 with a kappa coefficient of 0.71. The first vacuum mattress caused no artefacts hampering with clinical judgment.

Our study concludes that it is feasible to maintain some vacuum mattresses through resuscitation bay conventional radiography of chest and pelvis. They do not result in artefacts hampering with clinical judgment. Our vacuum mattress No. 1 is recommendable for this purpose. Together with our previous findings our present results indicate that some vacuum mattresses may be used throughout the initial resuscitation bay assessment and CT examination.