Attention focuses on football’s neurological effects
Friday Night Lights author Buzz Bissinger, writing in Time, looks at two things he claims are being overlooked during the most recent uproar over football injuries: High school athletes and spinal injuries. Bissinger has strong opinions and two anecdotes, one of which includes a source who said that roughly two Texas high school football players suffer catastrophic spinal injuries each year.
Bissinger praises Alan Schwarz’ work on concussions at The New York Times, but openly doubts whether the advances Schwarz is helping force at the professional level will ever translate to high school.
I know the focus will not trickle down to where it is needed most: the high school level. Research has shown that young players are far more susceptible than older ones to serious injuries. …
There should be an ambulance at every high school game. There should be trainers. But don’t bet on it, as school districts cry a lack of money. Kids will continue to suffer serious head injuries. Kids will continue to become paralyzed because they never learned how to properly tackle, with their heads up. The game’s violence will continue because that’s exactly why we like it, our gladiatorial lust still intact 16 centuries after the Romans. The bigger the hit, the greater the roar.
Not a new concern
In an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times, Deborah Blum, a professor of science journalism at the University of Wisconsin, writes about a warning published in The Journal of the American Medical Association that said the medical profession can no longer ignore that “There is a very definite brain injury due to single or repeated blows on the head or jaw which cause multiple concussion hemorrhages” in a report about professional athletes.”
But what really makes the research and its conclusions so interesting is its timing: it appeared in The Journal of the American Medical Association on Oct. 13, 1928. This raises the question – at least for me – as to why we are announcing the athlete concussion-dementia link as a new, and still somewhat debatable, issue some 80 years later.
House Judiciary forum
Watch a video webcast of the Feb. 1 “House Judiciary Committee Forum on Head Injuries and Other Sports Injuries in Youth, High School, College and Professional Football,” or read about Republican’s reluctance to hold said forum in Houston.
Dan Rather report
Dan Rather’s latest investigative effort was a far-reaching look at concussions and football, with emphasis on both the high school and professional games. He frames it as part of the pre-Super Bowl concussion awareness push (PDF Transcript).
ESPN to air ‘Head Games’
ESPN reporter Greg Garber, on “Outside the Lines,” will look at the issue of concussions and the NFL at 8 a.m. ET on Sunday. Harold Donald Carson, a former linebacker and inductee into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, “has become one of the leading spokesmen for the NFL’s retired players. Passionate and eloquent, he is in some ways the league’s conscience on the subject.”
Carson, who played 13 seasons for the New York Giants, estimates he suffered about a dozen concussions during his career, but none of them were documented. While he believes concussions among former football players will escalate into an epidemic, Dr. Joseph Maroon, the Steelers’ neurosurgeon for nearly three decades and a member of the NFL’s concussion committee for the past three years, disputes that:
“Because we know that there are millions of high school kids, college kids, youth leagues, as well as other who play football annually, I think we are not seeing the epidemic at that level people are speculating about,” Maroon said.
Related
- Advanced MRI reveals damage in brains of retired NFL football players
- Tim Tebow’s head fuels concussion debate
- Technology in play to help make football safer
- Brain damage caused by football is cumulative
- ‘Playing through’ concussions is damaging
NYT’s Schwarz discusses football concussion beat
For the Columbia Journalism Review, Brent Cunningham talked to The New York Times‘ Alan Schwarz about his work as the nation’s leading (and probably only) full-time football head injury reporter. Schwarz, whose work covering concussions brought him to the Times in 2007, talks about how he got started on the beat and how his work has impacted the sport as a whole.
It’s all interesting stuff, especially when he discusses how his background in mathematics has helped him report on sports injuries and medicine, but the real payoff comes when Cunningham finally gets Schwarz to divulge his personal stance on concussions in youth football. It’s a crystallization of all Schwarz has learned, as well as a delicate balancing act between his personal and professional ethics.
Photo by Eagle102.net via Flickr
CJR: Let’s assume for a minute that your son, who you said is three years old, is actually ten years old and he is clamoring to play Pop Warner football. Would the fact that you would then have to decide disqualify you from covering the story?
Schwarz: No, it wouldn’t disqualify me, though of course that’s up to my editors. But there is something about working here—and I’m not saying we’re better than everyone else, blah, blah, blah—but there is something that really inspires you to do the right thing, and to do the thing that helps you to cultivate the trust that allows readers to take you seriously. So I would probably let him play because if I didn’t it would compromise the reporting. It would compromise the trust that others and even the league may have in me. Now, I would not send him out to slaughter, but getting one concussion is not that big of a deal—it just isn’t. And to suggest otherwise is incredibly irresponsible. So if my kid gets one concussion then yeah, he doesn’t play anymore probably. But to not allow him on the field is, frankly, an overreaction. And if I didn’t allow him to play then yeah, it would be harder to cover the story, if only in my own mind. I believe that the cost to others of my not being able to cover this story as well would be greater than the cost of my kid getting one concussion and never playing again. I’m a very mathematical guy. I follow certain precepts. And those are the things that make sense to me. And I can’t tell my kid he can’t play, because then what am I going to tell the league? What am I going to tell my editors? It doesn’t work. It’s dissonant.
Related
- Tip sheet: Concussions in young athletes
- Tim Tebow’s head fuels concussion debate
- Technology in play to help make football safer
- Brain damage caused by football is cumulative
- ‘Playing through’ concussions is damaging
Covering Health: First year’s most popular posts
With a year of posts behind us, we thought it would be a good time to look back and see what posts proved to be the most popular – or at least the most read:
- Lewin group linked to private insurers
- Autism news raises question: When is an embargo not an embargo?
- Hensley joins NPR’s expanding health team
- Report: $25,000 buys access to Post’s health reporters
- CDC monitors H1N1 swine flu-human reassortment
- Oransky to take helm at Reuters Health
- Top N.Y. neurosurgeons suspended, sued
- Pharma industry still finding its way in social media
- Hospital says it gives content to short-staffed media
- Kuklo scandal spotlights DoD/Medtronic ties
- ‘Playing through’ concussions is damaging
- Where to find the facts on health care reform
- CBS questions CDC’s H1N1 prevalence estimates
- VA officials seize reporter’s audio recording
- Oprah’s health advice needs a shot in the arm
- Autism and vaccines: A failure to communicate
- Will pharmacists play a role in H1N1 vaccinations?
- Covering Obama’s stance on stem cell research
- Appleby to report for Kaiser Health News
- Prevention vs. treatment in global health
- FDA staff calls for end to corruption, wrongdoing
- Mentally ill patients, elderly mix in nursing homes
- Three health-care issues Obama, Congress will face
- Jost discusses consumer-driven health plans
- Tim Tebow’s head fuels concussion debate
War injuries advance treatment of brain injuries
In a three-part package published this month, the Los Angeles Times‘ Melissa Healy explains recent advances in the diagnosis and treatment of traumatic brain injury, with special focus on the United States armed forces.
- Treating traumatic brain injuries: Anecdotes from an Army National Guard medic and an equipment officer show how much lives can be changed by traumatic brain injury, an ailment that doesn’t even show up on CT scans or MRIs, and how a simple accurate diagnosis can provide patients with hope and understanding.
- War injury leads to advances at home: Healy writes that while combat veterans with traumatic brain injury are receiving the lion’s share of the attention, they’re just the tip of the iceberg. The “silent epidemic” has hit about 2 percent of the civilian population as well, which totals up to about 11 million since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began.
- Treating brain injuries on the sports field and battlefield: Finally, after tackling diagnosis and prevalence, Healy moves on to treatment. She walks through every step, from prevention to diagnosis to treatment, examining the latest in medical science along the way. It’s the longest piece in the package, and the best to start with if you’re looking for a better technical understanding of traumatic brain injury.
Tim Tebow’s head fuels concussion debate
The debate over sports-related concussions has resurfaced this week, thanks to the high-profile controversy over whether or not Florida quarterback Tim Tebow should play next week (The No. 1 Gators will face the No. 4 LSU Tigers in the Oct. 10 game), despite his recent concussion.
Experience
The Gainesville Sun’s Kevin Brockway interviewed ESPN football analyst Merrill Hoge to get an idea of the long-term ramifications of Tebow’s decision this week. Hoge is still suffering the residual effects of the concussions that forced him out of the NFL in 1994 after nine years as a fullback with the Chicago Bears and Pittsburgh Steelers.
The key quote comes when Hoge, who was once cleared to play after a concussion after a token over-the-phone check, speaks with the clarity of experience:
Photo by Eagle102.net via Flickr
“This is not a decision that should be made by the University of Florida, Urban Meyer or even Tim Tebow himself,” Hoge said. “This is a medical decision that should be made strictly by doctors.”
Asked what advice he would give Tebow, Hoge said the former Heisman Trophy winner should become as educated as possible about his condition and be honest about the symptoms he’s feeling.
“What’s one more week to sit out when you are talking about the rest of your life,” Hoge said.
Ethics
Bloomberg’s Scott Soshnick, meanwhile, tackles the ethics involved in the decision facing Tebow’s coach, Urban Meyer. He doesn’t seem impressed by Meyer’s actions.
Meyer says that a decision on when Tebow returns rests solely with the university’s medical team. Tebow would be wise to consult an independent doctor whose salary isn’t paid by a university that reaps millions from its powerhouse football program.
Meyer is giving himself plausible deniability. If Tebow plays against LSU and gets knocked senseless, the coach can say that he relied on the expertise of the medical professionals.
According to Soshnick, it’s up to Meyer to “protect Tebow from himself,” and keep the selfless player from trading short-term glory for potential lifelong damage.
Science
Finally, the concussion debate has been amplified by stories like Alan Schwarz’ report in The New York Times that an NFL-commissioned study found that “Alzheimer’s disease or similar memory-related diseases appear to have been diagnosed in the league’s former players vastly more often than in the national population — including a rate of 19 times the normal rate for men ages 30 through 49.” See the full study here.
For the other side of the story, see NFL Executive Vice President Harold Henderson’s USA Today opinion piece, in which he attempts to make the case that “The NFL has played a leading role for years in advancing the prevention, treatment and awareness of concussions in sports.”
Related
- Technology in play to help make football safer
- Brain damage caused by football is cumulative
- ‘Playing through’ concussions is damaging
Technology in play to help make football safer
A new multimedia effort from ESPN combines stories, video and graphics to show how technological innovators are working to make football a safer sport.
Photo by Eagle102.net via Flickr
Patrick Dorsey looks at one of the biggest health issues facing football players today, especially those in high school, writing about the continuing evolution of concussion diagnosis, prevention and treatment. Dorsey takes a look at advances in equipment, like a new $350 helmet that uses airbag-style padding to soften the blows taken by players’ heads, and in medicine. On the medical front, many schools now give students a pre-season test to establish their baseline mental function, then test them again after a suspected concussion and only allow them to play again once their brain is working normally once more.
Matt Winklejohn tackles another threat to football players’ health: the heat. Promising advances have produced sensors that measure the temperature inside each player’s helmet and wire the results to a handheld computer on the sidelines, shoulder pads that can be air-conditioned during breaks in practice and even a thermometer built into a pill athletes can swallow in order to monitor their internal core temperature, Winklejohn writes.
Relevant ESPN videos
Football Tech: Helmets
Football Tech: Shoulder Pads
Football Tech: Performance Gear
Relevant ESPN graphics
ZOOM Gallery: The evolution of football gear
Crosshairs: The world of football technology
Related
Find a primer on reporting on the health of student athletes and links to a number of articles, tip sheets, journal articles and other resources in AHCJ’s new “Reporting on sports injuries in school-age children” tip sheet and “Concussions in young athletes.”
- Computer software used to evaluate sports concussions
- Former NFL players still taking hits
- NFL’s concussions expert sells equipment to league
- Football players hide concussions; increasing risk of injury, death
- Athletes to donate brains to concussion research
- High school players at risk of ’second-impact syndrome’
‘Playing through’ concussions is damaging
HDNet’s Dan Rather reported on second-impact syndrome (see transcript here), the “concussion on top of a concussion” he said killed five football players last year. Some athletes may take a few days to heal from a concussion, others may take a few months. If an athlete returns to the field before his or her concussion is healed, Rather reported, the potential for further brain damage is greatly increased.
The report features Zackery Lystedt, a teen who suffered brain injuries in a football game in 2006. Tom Wyrwich of The Seattle Times also reported on Lystedt in his article about second-impact syndrome in November.
Rather reports that a just-released study by Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio found that 41 percent of high school athletes return to play too soon.
Related
- Football players hide concussions; increasing risk of injury, death
- High school players at risk of ’second-impact syndrome’
- NFL’s concussions expert sells equipment to league
- Tip Sheet: Concussions in young athletes
- Link: Sports Concussion Institute
- Link: University of Pittsburgh Sports Medicine Concussion Program
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Health Journalism 2010, AHCJ's annual conference, features a world-class program with story ideas, sources, stronger reporting skills, chances to meet newsmakers and network with other journalists.
- Health and education: Covering these intersecting beats
- Reporting on the business of health care
- Health reporting resources for journalists on state and local government beats
- Shortened Lives: How location, lifestyle affect health
- Covering a complex story for the long haul
- Aging in the 21st Century: Presentations and tip sheets
- AHCJ calls for better information from Joint Commission Web site
