Ep. 14 - Spinal Immobilization Guidelines Update

Today, we discuss updates in the WMS guidelines regarding the protection of patients with suspected spinal injuries.

The Wilderness Medicine Society Clinical Practice Guidelines are all open-access, and you can find links to all of these guidelines on the right sidebar of this page.

The education in this episode is based on the:

Wilderness Medical Society Clinical Practice Guidelines for Spinal Cord Protection: 2024 Update

If you've never seen a vacuum mattress before, this video (2:10) gives a good introduction.

If the brief mention of the Diploma in Mountain Medicine alpine skills course got you interested, you can learn more about the DiMM here.

As always, thanks for listening to Wilderness Medicine Updates, hosted by Patrick Fink MD FAWM.

Connect with us by email at wildernessmedicineupdates@gmail.com.

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Chapters

• 0:10 Intro
• 1:37 Main Concepts
• 3:36 Risks of Spinal Immobilization
• 4:15 "Clearing the Spine"
• 5:30 Extrication
• 9:43 The Vacuum Mattress
• 11:05 Summary and Conclusion
• 12:14 Outro