Annals of emergency medicine
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In the prehospital management of trauma, a variety of devices are used for immobilization of the spinal column during extrication and transport. Two of these commonly used immobilizers, the Zee Extrication Device and the long spinal board, use crisscrossing straps over the thorax to affix the patient to the device. Our study was designed to determine if these two devices alter pulmonary function in the healthy, nonsmoking man. ⋯ These differences reflect a marked pulmonary restrictive effect. The ratio FEV1:FVC can be normal or even slightly elevated with restrictive airway disease due to proportional reductions of each parameter. Correspondingly, we found no significant difference between prestrapping and poststrapping FEV1:FVC values (P greater than .05).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)