Articles Posted in Sports Injuries

A story published last week in the Los Angeles Times spotlights both the help technology can offer in the fight against traumatic brain injuries, and the surprising resistance that such technology can, and does, encounter.

The paper reported on a “wireless alert system” that can be placed in football helmets. Sensors placed inside the helmet trigger an alert on a smartphone or a similar device carried by a coach or trainer on the sidelines if the wearer suffers a potentially concussion-inducing blow to the head. The system, according to the paper, “gains data from five sensors placed on a plastic-like, paper-thin lining placed on top of helmet padding. The sensors measure linear and rotational acceleration as well as the duration and location of a hit. A computer chip in the helmet transfers data to a hand-held alert monitor – typically carried by a trainer – via a low power signal similar to Bluetooth.” The system can be adjusted according to the level of play (middle school v high school v college).

One might have imagined that the main problem this raised for high schools was financial – the systems cost about $150 per unit. When one LA area high school offered the sensors to all 120 of its football players earlier this year, however, only 20 stepped up to purchase them. What surprised even the school’s head athletic trainer, however, was the reason: according to the LA Times “parents worried about sons being pulled from games and missing playing time. Several said they dropped the sensor topic after their sons declined to wear one.” The trainer told the paper, “In the society we live in, the knowledge is there but the parents, I don’t know – it confused me.”

In a recent article in the New York Times Dr. Robert C. Cantu, a professor of neurosurgery at Boston University, issued a thoughtful, yet passionate, call for parents and school officials to rethink the way we approach youth sports here in the United States.

Writing that he meets with some 1,500 concussion patients each year, Dr. Cantu lays out the case for lowering the degree and intensity of contact that younger children experience across a range of sports. “In light of what we now know about concussions and the brains of children,” he writes, “many sports should be fine-tuned.” Dr. Cantu writes that children under 14 are fundamentally more vulnerable than older teenagers or adults. “A child’s brain and head are disproportionately large for the rest of the body,” he notes. “And a child’s weak neck cannot brace for a hit the way an adult’s can. (Think of a bobblehead doll.)”

He begins the piece by focusing on football, where he believes tackling should be eliminated for children under 14, but emphasizes that head trauma, concussions and brain injuries are all more common in other sports than is popularly believed. His piece goes on to propose rule changes in soccer, ice hockey, baseball, softball, field hockey and girls’ lacrosse – many of which are not activities most of us think of as contact sports.

A lengthy article published this week in Washington’s Kitsap Sun looks at the issue of traumatic brain injuries – particularly concussions – among young athletes. As the paper notes, “the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates more than 3.5 million concussions – defined as traumatic brain injuries – occur each year on ball fields and (in) sports venues across the country.”

The article focuses on the Zackery Lystedt law, a measure enacted in Washington in 2009 that prevents high school age and younger athletes “with suspected concussions from returning to the playing field without authorization from a licensed health care provider.” The law is named after a junior-high football player who suffered permanent brain damage and disability as a result of a 2006 game. The paper notes that “return-to-play legislation modeled after the Lystedt Law has since been adopted in 39 other states.”

According to SafeKids.org, Oregon’s own youth sports-focused TBI legislation, enacted about the same time as the Washington Law, offers some key safeguards but does not go nearly as far. A important difference is that Washington teens must be pulled from a game or practice if there is reason to believe that they may have suffered a concussion. Here in Oregon removing the athlete from competition or practice only becomes mandatory once they exhibit symptoms of a possible traumatic brain injury. Once an athlete has been pulled from the field both states require written clearance from a medical professional before the player can return to practices or competitions.

A recent op-ed published by The Oregonian calls for parents to take more care, and schools to take more responsibility, when it comes to preventing concussions and traumatic brain injuries among student athletes, especially younger athletes still in high school.

The column was written by James Chesnutt. He is identified in the article’s footer as a doctor and the “medical director of the OHSU sports medicine program.”

In the article he says that he is writing to encourage “all Oregon high schools to agree to a management protocol to help their student athletes deal with concussions.” He writes: “The protocol calls for schools to establish a plan to help a student recover.” This, he adds, could include time off from school following a head injury.