In the next few days training camps will start for the thirty-two NFL teams. Very few of us are lucky enough to have an NFL team in our immediate service area, but almost all of us respond to college and high school football practice fields. What kind of injuries and illness do you anticipate as tens of thousands of young athletes take to the practice field for grueling twice daily practices in the stifling heat of July and August?

 

I tend to think of the catastrophic possibilities – head/cervical spine injuries and heat emergencies. Football players frequently collide with horrific force. Axial loading, rotational, hyperextension, and hyperflexion of the cervical spine can occur during any play. Are you aware of the best practice guidelines from the National Athletic Trainers Association for helmet, face mask, and shoulder pad removal, as well as spine board immobilization? An Inter-Association task force, which included EMS representatives, authored a comprehensive position statement titled, Pre-Hospital

Care of the Spine Injured Athlete.

 

RapidCE.com contributor Keith Owsley is a firefighter paramedic and certified athletic trainer. He has prepared a two lesson series on assessment and treatment of c-spine injured athletes. Keith reminds us that many times local EMS services are on stand-by at high school football games and need to be ready to rapidly remove a football helmet face mask or to immobilize an injured player.

 

During pre-season practice, football players at all levels of competition are at high risk for suffering heat exhaustion or heat stroke. Heat exhaustion is a fluid or volume problem. In high heat, humidity, and exertion conditions, athletes can loose fluids faster than they can be orally replenished. Heat exhaustion is a form of hypovolemic shock and presents with the typical shock signs and symptoms. Heat stroke is a core temperature problem that causes altered mental status or reduced level of consciousness and unstable vital signs as the patient’s body attempts to dissipate heat. The choice of treatment is dependent on being able to recognize the differences between heat exhaustion and heat stroke.