FairWarning » Sports Injuries

Boom in Concussion Testing Fueled by Fear of Head Injuries

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 08:00:10 +0000

Amid increased awareness of the long-term damage that head-knocking sports collisions can inflict, many student-athletes are taking computer-based tests to examine their memory, reaction time and attention skills.

The exams are used to help determine whether athletes have suffered concussions, and if they have recovered. The Washington Post reports that an estimated 2 million U.S. athletes, students as well as others, have been evaluated by the best-known exam, ImPACT, which stands for Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing.

Many student-athletes are given a baseline test at the start of a season. If they suffer a possible concussion in a game, they are tested again to determine whether if they can return to play. The growing use of tests is fueled partly by laws passed over the last two years in 33 states and the District of Columbia requiring medical clearance before an athlete who has suffered a concussion can re-enter the game.

The reliance on ImPACT, as the Post put it, also “reflects growing public unease about the state of our kids’ gray matter. News stories about brain-damaged former NFL football players and reports from Afghanistan and Iraq, where 200,000 U.S. service members have suffered head injuries over the past decade, have also raised concerns about concussions, which almost seem routine in some sports.”

Yet ImPACT’s boom has drawn critics. Some contend the tests are less reliable than widely assumed, and that they are administered mainly for legal protection.

“A lot of school districts think they’re running liability risk if they’re not doing something,” said Christopher Randolph, a clinical professor of neurology at Loyola University in Chicago. Randolph contends that the danger of concussions is overblown, and that the most severe sports head injuries are caused by internal bleeding and swelling of the brain lining, not concussions.

Concussions typically are the result of a collision that causes the brain to be shaken inside the skull, causing such symptoms as difficulty thinking clearly, headaches, dizziness and mood changes. Medically, not much can be done to treat a concussion beyond resting athletes so that second concussions don’t occur while they are recovering.

On occasion, athletes have suffered “second impact syndrome” — an instance of severe brain damage sustained while a person is healing from initial injuries.

Given that danger, and the frequency of the injuries – according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1.7 million concussions and other traumatic brain injuries occur in the U.S. each year — tests such as ImPACT have many supporters.

“We don’t want crippled 13-year-olds because they were put back into a sporting event they should have been left out of,” said Dr. David Milzman, an emergency physician in the Washington area who has championed the use of ImPACT at local schools. “It’s not that complicated. Enough of this ‘Shake it off, kid,’ stuff.”

ROBERT T. NELSON

Doctors Group Trying to Knock Out Youth Boxing

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 20:34:09 +0000

When it comes to boxing, children and teenagers should throw in the towel before ever lacing up their gloves.

That’s the thrust of a new policy statement by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which says the sport carries too great a risk of chronic and acute brain injuries for young people.

The doctors association notes that database records show that boxing injuries accounted for an average of 8,716 visits to U.S. hospital emergency rooms a year from 1990 to 2008. The statement also cited a study indicating that one-third of injuries among amateur boxers were concussions.

According to the association, children’s brains are more vulnerable to concussion, and their recovery takes longer than it does for adults. What’s more, there is no evidence that the safety gear amateur boxers use actually reduces the frequency of concussions.

“We recommend young people participate in sports where the prime focus is not deliberate blows to the head,” said Dr. Claire LeBlanc, a co-author of the policy statement, in a news release.

TIMOTHY BELLA

Advanced Trauma Found in Brain of Ex-NFL Player Who Killed Himself

Tue, 03 May 2011 09:00:33 +0000

The brain of a former National Football League player who committed suicide in February, Dave Duerson, showed “moderately advanced” signs of a dementia-like disease linked to athletes who have suffered repeated brain trauma.

The finding of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, was announced by Dr. Ann McKee, a co-director of Boston University’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy. CNN reports that McKee said Duerson had “classic pathology of CTE and no evidence of any other disease. He had severe involvement of areas that control judgment, inhibition, impulse control, mood and memory.”

Duerson, who spent 11 years as a safety in the NFL, including seven with the Chicago Bears, had suffered at least 10 concussions during his career. He also experienced neurological symptoms since his retirement that were consistent with CTE.

Before he killed himself at the age of 50 this year, Duerson privately complained of his mental deterioration, and he left a suicide note saying, “Please, see that my brain is given to the NFL’s brain bank” at the BU research center.

Signs of CTE, which can be determined only after a person’s death, have been found in 14 of the 15 former NFL players whose brains have been evaluated at the center. The Duerson findings are sure to increase pressure on the NFL to do more to combat head injuries. “The league will have to turn its attention to what is becoming its most serious problem: what to do about its players’ brains,” Forbes staff writer Monte Burke said on his The Owner’s Box blog.

Duerson shot himself in the chest to avoid damaging brain tissue. Of the NFL players who have donated their brains to the NFL’s “brain bank,” he is the only one to specify before his death that he wanted his brain to be studied for CTE, BU researchers said.

Amid rising safety concerns, the NFL last season said it would take tougher action against players who deliver helmet-to-helmet hits and other flagrant blows on the field.

Concerns over brain injuries also have spilled over into youth football. According to the Sporting Goods Manufacturing Assn., participation in tackle football (for those age 6 and up) has declined by 17.4 percent over the past nine years.

To reduce brain injuries, “We need [youth] coaches to be smarter about what drills they choose,” Chris Nowinski, a former college football player and a co-director of the BU research center, told The Wall Street Journal.

NHL Takes a New Shot at Curbing Concussions

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 16:06:14 +0000

The National Hockey League is taking aim at the sport’s problem with concussions.

As Bloomberg reports, the league is adopting a more stringent protocol requiring that players showing symptoms of a concussion be evaluated by a physician in a quiet space away from the action and emotion of the game. In the past, team trainers typically carried out the evaluation on the bench.

Commissioner Gary Bettman characterized the new approach as the latest phase in the NHL’s push to combat concussions and hits to the head, an effort that started in 1997. “This is just another in a series of steps,” he said Monday, at the end of the first day of the three-day annual meeting in Boca Raton, Fla., of the league’s general managers.

Under the plan, extra emphasis also will be placed on punishing illegal hits, which the league says is the cause of 17 percent of concussions in hockey. Bettman, in addition, announced a committee composed of former players to examine ways to make the players’ equipment safer.

The sports world has paid far more attention to concussions in recent years, due to a growing body of medical research connecting blows to the head to premature dementia and depression later in life. Much of the attention has focused on the NFL, where a rash of ex-players were discovered to have traumatic brain injuries, including several who committed suicide.

But hockey, too, has recently been on the hot seat regarding concussions. The player widely regarded as one of the league’s best, Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins, returned to practice Monday after missing 29 straight games related to taking a pair of blows to the head in a game more than two months ago.

In addition, a recently disclosed analysis of the brain of Bob Probert, a retired player once notorious for his fighting on the ice who died of a heart attack last year at the age of 45, concluded that he was suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The degenerative brain disease is associated with concussions.

Athletic Gear Group Promises to Pursue Improved Football Helmets

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 19:30:55 +0000

The organization that monitors the safety of American athletic gear is promising to pursue new football helmet standards to better protect young football players.

The New York Times reports that the pledge came at the conclusion of the annual meeting of the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment, or NOCSAE, a volunteer group financed largely by the sporting goods industry. Also attending were officials from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which lately has put pressure on NOCSAE to combat football’s problems with concussions.

Recent research has shown dangerous links between on-field concussions and disorders such as premature dementia and depression later in life. However, NOCSAE’s current helmet safety standards do not take into consideration concussion prevention. Instead, its guidelines, which haven’t been significantly updated since 1973, aim only to protect against skull fractures.

Despite continuing skepticism among some NOCSAE officials about whether helmet improvements can reduce the risk of concussions, this weekend the organization awarded $600,000 in grants for concussion-related research. It also formed a committee to support research that could improve football testing standards.

As Dr. Robert Cantu, a NOCSAE vice president and a professor of neurosurgery at Boston University, explained: “We ultimately came to the conclusion that yes, it would be desirable to look and study and try to understand if we can come up with a meaningful youth football helmet standard.”

Experts Urge Measures to Protect Pro and Amateur Athletes from Brain Trauma

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 10:00:04 +0000

Just two weeks after the National Football League announced a crackdown on helmet-to-helmet tackles to reduce the risk of head injuries, the American Academy of Neurology has issued recommendations for protecting amateur and professional athletes who may have suffered a concussion.

Any athlete with a possible concussion should be removed from play immediately and be seen by a physician specially trained in the evaluation of brain trauma, the recommendations state. Moreover, the athlete should not return to the field until cleared by a specialist, according to the recommendations, which also call for having a certified athletic trainer present at all games and practices where there is risk of concussions.

The advisory is expected to have the greatest impact on the 4.1 million kids who play football in high school and youth leagues, and whose games and practices are rarely monitored by professionals trained to detect and respond to brain trauma.

The explosion in youth sports over recent decades has put young athletes at growing risk for concussion, according to the Los Angeles Times. The number of kids seeking emergency care for sports-related concussions more than doubled between 2000 and 2005, according to a recent study in the journal Pediatrics –an increase driven largely by a surge in concussions among children between the ages of 8 and 14.

Those numbers are a source of concern since research suggests that young brains are more vulnerable to concussions and take longer to heal.

The Academy of Neurology made its recommendations in a statement in advance of formal changes in its injury guidelines. The current guidelines were adopted in 1997 and are undergoing revision. The group said it was speaking out now because of the importance of the issue.