Whole-body vibration transmissibility in supine humans: Effects of board litter and neck collar

Whole-body vibration has been identified as a stressor to supine patients during medical transportation. The transmissibility between the input platform acceleration and the output acceleration of the head, sternum, pelvis, head-sternum, and pelvis-sternum of eight supine subjects were investigated. Vibration files were utilized in the fore-aft, lateral, and vertical directions. The power spectral density across the bandwidth of 0.5-20 Hz was approximately flat for each file. A comparison between a baseline rigid-support and a support with a long spinal board strapped to a litter has shown that the latter has considerable effects on the transmitted motion in all directions with a double magnification in the vertical direction around 5 Hz. The results also showed that the neck-collar has increased the relative head-sternum flexion extension because of the input fore-aft vibration, but reduced the head-sternum extension compression due to the input vertical vibration. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd and The Ergonomics Society. All rights reserved.