Better late than never. The NFL seems to have finally figured out that its sport’s future depends on protecting its most important asset, the players. It may be a little naive, but from this perspective, it seems that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell really gets it. Concussions involve brain injury. Brain injured players aren’t very good players and have lots of problems after they retire.
With the Super Bowl just hours away from starting, Goodell told “Face the Nation” Sunday that the league was still studying ways to make the game safer and cut down head injuries in particular.
Goodell said that the so-called “three point stance,” where players square off with one hand on the ground, could eventually be barred, according to a New York Times story on his interview with Bob Schieffer. The article was headlined “Commissioner Stresses New Culture of Safety.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/sports/football/08nfl.html?ref=sports
On the “Face the Nation,” Goodell said that for years “the culture” at the NFL was that concussions weren’t serious injuries.
“I think we have changed that culture and made sure that people understand they are serious and they can have serious consequences if they’re not treated seriously,” he told Schieffer.
On Super Bowl Sunday both The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Washington Post weighed in on the concussion issue.
In an editorial, http://www.philly.com/inquirer/currents/83742022.html
The Inquirer cited a Time magazine issue with a cover story on “the most dangerous game,” pro-football, which The Inquirer said “has crippled retirees mentally and physically.”
Young players sustain 140,000 concussions a year, and half of them return to the field so soon they may suffer permanent braind damage, The Inquirer warns.
And Washington Post columnist Leonard Shapiro complained that the Super Bowl pregame show and telecast made no mention of the concussion issue. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/07/AR2010020703736.html
It is an interesting question, whether football is really the most dangerous sport. Boxing will always be on the top of my list even though it involves far fewer participants. The goal of boxing is to cause a brain injury to one’s opponent. Much of the impetus behind the growing movement to forbid return to play on the day of a concussion comes out of concern for the “second impact syndrome.” In second impact syndrome, the brain’s ability to regulate cranial blood pressure is impaired by the first concussion. When a second concussion occurs there can be a resulting catastrophic increase in intracranial pressure, ICP. It was such injury that caused Zachery Lystedt’s brain injury. Well how does one reconcile no return to play rules, when the injured person continues to box?
The Near-Fatal Football Injury That Lead To California’s Proposed Laws on Concussions
We recently wrote that California is considering new legislation that would impose strict guidelines on when high school athletes can return to the field after sustaining head injuries. Only three other states have policies as strict as the one California is considering.
The San Francisco Chronicle today has a detailed story, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/24/MN6V1BM6OR.DTL, on
the young man whose near-fatal football injury lead to the proposed legislation.
Blea was playing for San Jose Academy High when he was hit in the chest during a play at a Thanksgiving Day game last year. He got up from the field, got to the sidelines and then collapsed. He was put in a drug-induced coma for a week, spent almost a month in hospitals and lost 31 pounds, according to the Chronicle.
The story cites a number of statistics regarding high school injuries. For example, about 68,000 concussions were sustained during the 2008 high school football season, according to the National High School Sports-Related Injury Surveillance Study.
And the man who helped organize that study, Ohio State associate professor Dawn Comstock, said that in 2008 16 percent of high school football players who had concussions where they lost consciousness went back to play that same day.
Blea played as a running back and linebacker, positions that one study found are most likely to get concussions.
Two U.S. high school players died as a direct result of football injuries last year, the Chronicle story says.
Physicians say Blea’s outlook is good, but he can’t play football again.
When he was hit, Blea fell and his head hit the turf, with his brain “slamming against his skull,” according to the Chronicle.
The story then describes his surgeries and recovery.
The San Francisco Chronicle today has a detailed story, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/24/MN6V1BM6OR.DTL, on
the young man whose near-fatal football injury lead to the proposed legislation.
Blea was playing for San Jose Academy High when he was hit in the chest during a play at a Thanksgiving Day game last year. He got up from the field, got to the sidelines and then collapsed. He was put in a drug-induced coma for a week, spent almost a month in hospitals and lost 31 pounds, according to the Chronicle.
The story cites a number of statistics regarding high school injuries. For example, about 68,000 concussions were sustained during the 2008 high school football season, according to the National High School Sports-Related Injury Surveillance Study.
And the man who helped organize that study, Ohio State associate professor Dawn Comstock, said that in 2008 16 percent of high school football players who had concussions where they lost consciousness went back to play that same day.
Blea played as a running back and linebacker, positions that one study found are most likely to get concussions.
Two U.S. high school players died as a direct result of football injuries last year, the Chronicle story says.
Physicians say Blea’s outlook is good, but he can’t play football again.
When he was hit, Blea fell and his head hit the turf, with his brain “slamming against his skull,” according to the Chronicle.
The story then describes his surgeries and recovery.
California Weighs Strict Laws To Protect Student Athletes With Concussions
Momentum for the Lystedt Law which prevents a concussed scholastic athlete to return to the game in which he or she receives a concussion continues to grow. California, often on the vanguard of American culture and society, has joined the movement to impose tough laws to protect young sports players from concussions.
California is considering new legislation and a proposal from the state’s high school sports federation that would mandate that physicians have a say before an injured can return to play, according to a story Friday in the San Bernardino County Sun.
The story, http://www.sbsun.com/sports/ci_14244046, says that only three other states have policies as strict as the one California is considering.
The legislation was proposed after the near-death of San Jose High Academy Football player Matt Blea, according to the story.
California Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi has introduced two bills. The first would require coaches to become familiar with the symptoms of head injuries. The second would require a physician to give an OK before an injured player could get back on the field.
That second bill is similar to a proposal that the California Interscholastic Federation, which governs sports at about 1,500 schools, is considering.
Currently many California school districts mandate that injured student players must get a physician’s release before resuming play, according to the story. But not all schools have such a policy.
Zachery Lystedt was a high school football player in Washington who suffered a mild concussion early in a game but continued to play. Near the end of the game he suffered another concussion, which resulted in a severe brain injury. His injury became the impetus for a law in his home state of Washington prohibiting any return to play of a scholastic athlete after a concussion.
California is considering new legislation and a proposal from the state’s high school sports federation that would mandate that physicians have a say before an injured can return to play, according to a story Friday in the San Bernardino County Sun.
The story, http://www.sbsun.com/sports/ci_14244046, says that only three other states have policies as strict as the one California is considering.
The legislation was proposed after the near-death of San Jose High Academy Football player Matt Blea, according to the story.
California Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi has introduced two bills. The first would require coaches to become familiar with the symptoms of head injuries. The second would require a physician to give an OK before an injured player could get back on the field.
That second bill is similar to a proposal that the California Interscholastic Federation, which governs sports at about 1,500 schools, is considering.
Currently many California school districts mandate that injured student players must get a physician’s release before resuming play, according to the story. But not all schools have such a policy.
Zachery Lystedt was a high school football player in Washington who suffered a mild concussion early in a game but continued to play. Near the end of the game he suffered another concussion, which resulted in a severe brain injury. His injury became the impetus for a law in his home state of Washington prohibiting any return to play of a scholastic athlete after a concussion.
The Evolution of Our Understanding of Concussion: The Role of the Concussion and Sport Guidelines
Yesterday’s blog began a series of discussions about “The Evolution of Our Understanding of Concussion, otherwise Called Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.” Today I continue to follow the topics of my YouTube videos on this theme. Today’s video is found here: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney#p/u/10/_kgiKz6WGSw
Today’s subset of this theme deals with the role that the various concussion and sport guidelines played in changing how the medical community and the public looked at concussion. The first set of those guidelines came out of an article written by James Kelly, M.D. in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association: J.P. Kelly et al., Concussion in Sports, Guidelines for the Prevention of Catastrophic Outcome, 266 JAMA 2867, 2868 (1991). Kelly’s article was also really the first to warn of the danger of the “second impact syndrome”. It is concern about the second impact syndrome, where the second concussion leads to a catastrophic increase in intracranial pressure, that fueled much of the early development of these guidelines.
Among the important contributions of that first work on concussion and sport were the no-return to play if a concussion was symptomatic for more than 15 minutes and the requirement that a concussion that was symptomatic for more than 15 minutes would require serial evaluations until the symptoms had cleared. That first guideline, promulgated by the American Academy of Neurology required that symptoms would have to clear for a full seven days before the athlete was allowed to return to play.
The reason this serial evaluation requirement is so significant is that it is not the symptoms that an individual has on the day of that determines the severity of concussion, but how symptomatic they are at 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
http://subtlebraininjury.com
http://car-accident-rain.com
http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com
http://vestibulardisorder.com
http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
g@gordonjohnson.com
800-992-9447
Today’s subset of this theme deals with the role that the various concussion and sport guidelines played in changing how the medical community and the public looked at concussion. The first set of those guidelines came out of an article written by James Kelly, M.D. in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association: J.P. Kelly et al., Concussion in Sports, Guidelines for the Prevention of Catastrophic Outcome, 266 JAMA 2867, 2868 (1991). Kelly’s article was also really the first to warn of the danger of the “second impact syndrome”. It is concern about the second impact syndrome, where the second concussion leads to a catastrophic increase in intracranial pressure, that fueled much of the early development of these guidelines.
Among the important contributions of that first work on concussion and sport were the no-return to play if a concussion was symptomatic for more than 15 minutes and the requirement that a concussion that was symptomatic for more than 15 minutes would require serial evaluations until the symptoms had cleared. That first guideline, promulgated by the American Academy of Neurology required that symptoms would have to clear for a full seven days before the athlete was allowed to return to play.
The reason this serial evaluation requirement is so significant is that it is not the symptoms that an individual has on the day of that determines the severity of concussion, but how symptomatic they are at 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
http://subtlebraininjury.com
http://car-accident-rain.com
http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com
http://vestibulardisorder.com
http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
g@gordonjohnson.com
800-992-9447