The horsepower unleashed around the track during qualifying heats easily can be heard as one racer after another makes his way into the UAB Care Center at Barber Motorsports Park in Leeds.

UAB Critical Care Transport personnel give IV fluids to a driver prior to the Porsche 250 at Barber Motorsports Park in July. UAB operates the care center at the facility for its professional events each year.

It's pre-race prep time for the drivers who come into the facility well-rested and fresh. However, they know the Alabama summer heat eventually will get the best of them on this July day. Temperatures inside their cars will top 130 degrees, and the option to receive IV fluids is attractive to several racers participating in the Porsche 250.

"Each sport has unique injuries, and climate plays a big role at this race," says Drew Ferguson, director of Sports Medicine and medical coordinator at Barber Motorsports. "This will be the hottest event they'll have in the Rolex/Porsche series all year, and the drivers know that. Some come and request pre-hydration IV, and we're here to provide it now and after the event if they get dehydrated, which is common."

UAB staffs many clinics across the state, but the one in the red cross-shaped building at Barber Motorsports is unique.

George Barber, former owner of Barber Dairies, opened the 2.38-mile long racetrack and its accompanying museum in 2003, and UAB medical staff have provided care for athletes during the two professional races at the track every year.

Barber and his staff traveled to Daytona and Indianapolis during the track's design phase, gathering design ideas with one goal in mind: building the best possible on-site medical facility of any motorsports track in the country.

"If you know George Barber," Ferguson says, "you know he doesn't do anything second-class." Barber walked into Ferguson's office early one morning in 2001 with the blueprints under his arm, asking for guidance, and UAB provided help with that and, ultimately, much more. 

"We wanted to build something unique that would combine a trauma center similar to what you would have in an emergency room," Ferguson says. "We thought we could staff it with our trauma surgeons, orthopedic surgeons, residents and critical-care transport crew to ensure the racers and their pit crews would get world-class care."

The facility features four beds in the trauma room, a portable C-ARM X-Ray machine, a family waiting area and a lounge overlooking the track for the 15-plus medical personnel members. LifeSaver also has its helicopter on standby outside the facility, and Critical Care Transport also is available. The ambulance bay on the back side of the trauma room is large enough to accommodate two ambulances at once in the event of a major accident.

"It's like a mini emergency-room triage," Ferguson says. "If they're crashing we can stabilize them, take care of them and send them to UAB Hospital."

Most of the triage and treatments in the trauma center consist of minor injuries. Sutures and IV fluids are the most common needs, and sunburns, bug bites, sprained ankles and small lacerations also show up with great frequency. But there have been occasions in which the trauma was more severe.

Fractured arms, wrists and legs are among those injuries, but the most serious was a ruptured spleen that trauma surgeon Sherry Melton, M.D., had to remove from a competitor in a Superbike Classic, the other professional race UAB medical personnel staffs every year.

"We've been fortunate, really," Melton says. "On site we've had some pretty significant lacerations we've treated, and we've had some people who we figured out very quickly needed to go into the hospital for trauma-type care.

"The idea behind this UAB Care Center is to give someone who is critically injured the same level of care they would get in the pre-hospital setting and then get them to the hospital as soon as possible. We hope never to do a bunch of big-time procedures out here."

Racing expertise key component
The medical center staff donates their time during the two race weeks each year. For orthopedic surgeon Richard Meyer, M.D., it's two of the best weekends of his year.

Meyer has been involved with racing for more than 30 years, both as a competitor and a doctor. He was the team physician for the American Motorcycle Association's International enduro team for more than 20 years and has traveled throughout the United States and Europe with motorcycle racing teams.

Meyer's racing expertise is a key component for the medical team. He's familiar with the uniforms, boots, helmets and the best way to get them off the drivers without destroying the uniform or further injuring or hurting the racer. He also knows how to extricate people from cars and has assisted Birmingham Fire on the track at Barber before.

"Knowing these type of things are helpful in assisting track personnel, and this is something we can teach the residents in case they get further interested in this kind of medicine," he says.

"It also helps them if they were to come up on the scene of an accident or just give them knowledge of trauma in general."

Knowing the rigors of the sport of racing also aid the on-site doctors diagnosing injuries. Crashes - even the way a person sits or rides as they race - foster unique injuries, especially for motorcyclists. For example, there are certain tendonitis problems in the wrists of motorcyclists that Meyer says doctors may not see in most places.

"Knowing what to look for enables you to obviate a whole lot of diagnostic checks and other activities that people might do if you recognize something you see something all the time, like second dorsal compartment syndrome," Meyer says. "That's something riders get frequently."

Barber provides learning opportunities
Barber Motorsports wants to bring more professional races to its track, including the Indy Racing League in 2010. Motocross may join the lineup as early as next year.
Meyer says UAB's ties to Barber give researchers a unique opportunity to expand their future work, and more professional races at Barber will enhance the learning opportunities across campus.

He believes the track might be an ideal place to do more in-depth studies of car crashes and their impact on the body.

"With the engineers and researchers we have at UAB and with the Injury Control Research Center there should be a way to acquire some funding to put some high-speed cameras on the track in areas that you know we have wrecks and study them," Meyer says.

"Maybe this would be a way to figure out how we could make roads and racing safer," he says. "It's just an idea, but I think it shows there are many learning opportunities for the UAB community here."