Unnecessary Post-Reduction X-Rays?

Falling into the “well, duh” sort of category that cuts through the dogmatic haze, this article examines the ordering of post-reduction radiographs in the Emergency Department.

Specifically, this group of orthopedists from New York City looks at X-ray utilization and length-of-stay after consultation and management of minimally displaced, minimally angulated extremity fractures.  They note that, of 342 fractures meeting study criteria, 204 of them subsequently received post-splinting radiography.  They note that none of the patients receiving post-reduction radiography had any change in alignment or change in splint application, and this practice resulted in significantly longer ED length-of-stay.

This leads them to their conclusion that minimally displaced, minimally angulated extremity fractures that do not receive manipulation when splinting should not be re-imaged after splint application.  And, this seems like a fairly reasonable conclusion.  It’s retrospective, the outcomes are surrogates for patient oriented-outcomes, etc., and it would be reasonable to re-evaluate this conclusion in a prospective trial –   but if your practice is already to not routinely re-image, this supports continuing your entirely reasonable clinical decision-making.

“Post-Splinting Radiographs of Minimally Displaced Fractures: Good Medicine or Medicolegal Protection?”
http://jbjs.org/article.aspx?articleid=1356145

C-Collars Cannot Stabilize Unstable Injuries

This is another cautionary anatomic study that demonstrates cervical collars are not adequate immobilization devices – except in patients who already do not need them.

This is a cadaveric spinal immobilization study in which C5/C6 instability was induced, and the Ambu extrication collar, the Aspen collar, and no collar were evaluated for range of bending and rotation during a bed transfer simulation.

The results are pretty straightforward.  Before the instability was induced, patients had minimal neck movement, whether immobilized or not.  After instability was induced, the patients all had significant bending and rotation – nearly the same for the patients in the collars as in no collar at all.

This is consistent with the small amount of prior work done in actual unstable spines; most of the cervical collar data is in healthy volunteers.  The limitations of a cervical collar should be recognized, and patients should have their cervical spine evaluated and cleared or intervened on immediately.

“Cervical collars are insufficient for immobilizing an unstable cervical spine injury.”
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21397431

Back Pain, Harbinger of Death

In Perth, Western Australia, clearly back pain is a different sort of entity than back pain here in the United States.  This is a retrospective review of 22,000 back pain representing 1.9% of all visits over a five year period simply as an epidemiologic overview with descriptive statistics.

And, fascinating statistics they are.  Highlights:
 – 43.8% of patients were diagnosed with simple muscular back pain.
 – 17.1% of muscular back pain patients required admission to the hospital with a mean length-of-stay of 6.4 days, and one that was hospitalized for 163 days!
 – Patients at the extremes of age (< 15 years, > 75 years) were simple muscular back pain less than 40% of the time.
 – Of the medical diseases found in the non-muscular group, the top were renal colic, sciatica, UTI/pyelonephritis.
 – 24 myocardial infarctions, 53 pulmonary emboli, 17 aortic dissections, and 18 ruptured AAA were diagnosed in patients with a primary complaint of back pain.

How do 17.1% of simple muscular back pain patients get admitted to the hospital?  For six days?  It boggles the mind.

Finally – back pain at the harbinger of death – there was a 1.2% 30-day mortality rate in all patients presenting for any complaint of back pain, and 0.8% with non-specific or muscular back pain.  That’s almost as lethal as our low-risk chest pain cohort here in the U.S.

Fascinating.

“Analysis of 22,655 presentations with back pain to Perth emergency departments over five years”
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21923920

Shoulder Reduction – Spanish-Style

Another interesting article regarding shoulder reduction techniques.

Essentially, what I read into shoulder reduction is that – if there many usually successful ways to do something, pretty much anything works.  And, what seems to be the generally accepted way to do it – excepting the scapular manipulation technique – is pulling on it.  What is different between methods seems to be how exactly you apply the traction.

This is a single-operator method with direct axial traction on the distal humerus with one hand and counter-traction on the acromium with the other hand.  The trouble I foresee with this method is that you’re fighting a lot of large muscles on the patient with your own, smaller, rotator cuff and shoulder abductors.  I think you’d end up fatiguing before a lot of your patients.

The variation I might suggest is the snowbird technique, where you use the weight of your leg to provide downward traction via stockinette around the forearm.  You can sometimes get away from having to do full procedural sedation if you can perform a technique like this where the patient fatigues before you do.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21620607