Articles Posted in Spinal Cord Injuries

A surprising – and heartening – article in the sports section of the New York Times last week revealed that heightened awareness of the serious nature of sports-related concussions and other traumatic brain injuries has turned up in an unexpected forum: video games.

The paper reports that “Madden NFL 12, the coming version of the eerily true-to-life NFL video game played by millions of gamers, will be realistic enough not only to show players receiving concussions, but also to show any player who sustains one being sidelined for the rest of the game – no exceptions.”

Considering the extent of the criticism being weathered by the real-life NFL over head injury issues and the long term health of the league’s players, this development can only be called striking. The article quotes John Madden himself saying that the change in the game’s format was driven partly by the desire for ever-greater realism, but also from a belief that children need to understand how serious a matter concussions can be. “We want that message to be strong,” Madden told the Times.

An important article published in the New York Times last week indicates that the manufacturers of football helmets are moving to address problems in the way their products are used – a move that could benefit many young athletes in a time when traumatic brain injuries stemming from football and other rough sports are an issue of increasing concern.

According to the newspaper, “the National Athletic Equipment Reconditioners Association (Naera) announced (last) Thursday that is would no longer accept helmets more than 10 years old.” As the paper notes, many schools regularly send football helmets in for reconditioning, but concerns have been rising that as the products age it can become difficult if not impossible to bring the gear back to a point where it meets appropriate safety standards. Under current standards, the paper notes, so long as the equipment met applicable safety standards when it was new “helmets of any age and condition can be worn, despite concerns over how the stiffening of foam and the degrading of the polycarbonate shell can leave a player more susceptible to concussions.”

Though the article does not say this, it appears that football helmet manufacturers and reconditioners may be taking a cue from the ski industry. For several decades the manufacturers of ski bindings have indemnified their products for a finite period of years (usually 10 or 12). Once that period expires, skiers quickly discover that few ski techs will agree to make even minor adjustments to the bindings. A cynic might say the companies are forcing skiers to purchase new equipment on a regular basis, but the policy also ensures that the vast majority of skiers are using relatively up-to-date equipment – an important consideration in such a potentially dangerous sport.

Earlier this month New Jersey Governor Chris Christie signed wide-ranging legislation designed to protect student-athletes in his state. As reported by the website Safe Kids New Jersey, the bill will require the state’s Department of Education “to develop an interscholastic athletic head injury safety training program to be completed by school physicians, coaches and athletic trainers” in both public and private schools.

The website goes on to note that the New Jersey program will include teaching school personnel how to recognize “symptoms of head and neck injuries,” how to judge when an athlete should be allowed to return to the field and when someone requires further treatment, including hospitalization. As the organization notes, “currently, there is no uniform method of handling suspected concussions in interscholastic sports.”

As I have noted in previous posts looking at both football and hockey, concern over concussions and other traumatic brain injuries at all levels of competition is rising here in Oregon and nationwide. Parents as well as coaches and trainers are becoming more and more aware of the dangers improperly diagnosed or treated head injuries can pose, especially to younger athletes. Below you’ll find a link to an especially helpful checklist of questions every parent should know to ask when talking to a doctor treating a child for a suspected head injury (the list is compiled by the federal government’s National Institutes of Health).

As the nation settles in for another football-filled fall weekend many of the sport’s fans are focusing on new enforcement measures announced by the NFL in the last few days. The league wants to contain the damage being caused by violent, potentially catastrophic, hits. As has been reported just about everywhere, an unusually large number of stomach-churning plays last week led the league to issue fines, threaten suspensions and warn players that enforcement of the sport’s existing rules is going to be tougher from now on.

But as a pair of articles published at opposite ends of the country this week remind us, the dangers of traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, concussions or other serious injuries faced by high school, middle school and youth players are, in some ways, far greater than those confronting the highly-trained, closely monitored athletes of the NFL.

In a wide-ranging article published yesterday, the Los Angeles Times noted that, in Southern California, no baseline set of standards exists for medical care at high school football games. The article dramatically contrasts the situation at private schools that can afford to have a staff of as many as four athletic trainers and a doctor roaming the sidelines to that of poor public schools that make due with an ambulance parked at one end of the field. Such a situation, the paper notes, offers reassurance in the event of a catastrophic brain or spinal cord injury, but does little or nothing for players who suffer milder, harder to diagnose – and far more common – injuries, such as concussions.

New parents have been told for years to use rear-facing car seats until their babies turn one year old and weigh 20 pounds, after which front-facing child seats are the norm. But data from both Oregon and the federal government are leading medical and safety professionals to reassess this long-held belief, according to state publications and a recent article in the Bend Bulletin.

Expert opinion is coalescing around the idea that children should face backwards until they are at least two years old, the Bulletin reports. Oregon’s Public Health Service adds that “children under the age of two are 75% less likely to be killed or severely injured in a motor vehicle crash is they are riding rear facing rather than forward facing.”

There is an especially great danger of Oregon traumatic brain injuries and spinal cord injuries when young children are not properly restrained in an approved car seat. The Bulletin, citing child emergency physician Dennis Durbin, notes that “young children have weaker neck muscles than older children and adults. Their ligaments are looser. And the bones in the neck aren’t locked together in the same way as an adult’s.” These physiological factors put small children at a significantly higher risk of traumatic brain injuries when they are in a forward-facing car seat. Rear facing seats are safer because in a crash they tend to provide more support for a child’s neck and back.