Vacuum Mattress - Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages and Disadvantages

The vacuum mattress is an alternative to the use of a long spine board. Its advantages are:

• it is comfortable;
• it is adapted to all traumas, included spine and femoral traumas;
• the victim feels secured;
• it can be used instead of a stretcher for manual transportation (with the handles, e.g. in stairs) when longitudinal rigidity is not critical, or for short distances with six team members.

Its drawbacks are:

• it is relatively fragile, and becomes useless if only partially inflated (the vacuum requires a perfectly sealed envelope);
• It is more expensive than the traditional long spine board
• The proccess of vacuuming the bag is often longer than experienced individuals transferring a casualty to a standard spinal board.