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Brain and Spinal Cord Injuries
Tackling Head Injuries Head-on
As student athletes continue to get bigger, faster, and stronger, the incidence of sports-related traumatic brain damage is on the rise. Sports medicine has come a long way in the past 20 years in the treatment and tracking of sports concussions. In the early 1990's, a doctoral candidate at the University of Georgia, Martin Mrazik, worked on the first simple experiments to measure the impact of concussions. Mrazik theorized that if one could measure the athletes' baseline cognitive function before the start of the season, before they suffered a concussion, then one could measure what happens after an athlete suffered a head injury. Mrazik developed written tests of reaction time and processing speed.A few years later, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center computerized Mrazik's crude test, creating the Immediate Post Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Test (ImPACT) system. In the past couple of years, the National Hockey Association, the National Football League, and U.S. Lacrosse (which reports that concussion is the third most prevalent injury among its male and female athletes) adopted ImPACT as an assessment tool. This year, the Canadian Football League followed suit. The goal of ImPACT is to properly diagnose concussion and then to make sure the athlete does not return to action until he or she is fully recovered.
Today, Dr. Mrazik is a professor at the University of Alberta, which applies ImPACT to all of its football, hockey, rugby, and soccer players. Dr. Mrazik is not satisfied. He worries about the lower school and recreational athletes who do not have the benefit of health care professionals who are trained to diagnose and treat brain damage. Mrazik cites the example of Brett Lindros, the younger brother of former Philadelphia Flyers star, Eric Lindros, who was forced to retire from hockey at age 19 because of repeated concussions suffered in junior hockey.
This problem is not limited to junior hockey. Every day in this country, middle school and high school football players return to practice within a day or two of suffering serious, and often serial, concussions. There is no way the school coaching staffs are properly trained in spotting and managing concussions. ImPACT needs to become standard practice in U.S. colleges, high schools, and middle schools.
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