The NHL playoffs are well into Round 2 and, really, the story of the little green men isn’t the biggest story.
No. The biggest story of these playoffs, perhaps of any playoff, occurred Friday. It just didn’t get the attention that a major story deserves. After all, there were games to be played that night and on the weekend.
It was on Friday when Sidney Crosby, who had been working to get back in the Pittsburgh Penguins’ lineup since suffering a concussion in early January, revealed that he had suffered a setback the previous week. It forced him, he said, to take a step back.
On the blog of Globe and Mail hockey writer James Mirtle, Crosby is quoted as having said:
“It’s more frustrating. My expectation probably wasn’t that I’d play (during these playoffs), but I was just trying to make sure that if there was any chance that it was possible to come back that I was ready and that I’d done everything I could to be ready. It’s frustrating, disappointing. But I can’t really control any of that.
“All I can control is what I was doing off the ice in trying to rehab and all that stuff. Unfortunately it didn’t work out.”
And just like that — “Unfortunately it didn’t work out” — the greatest player in today’s hockey world stepped back into the shadows. His Penguins have been eliminated from the playoffs so the glare of the spotlight won’t find him perhaps until late August.
By now you’ve seen the hits Crosby’s noggin absorbed. First, on Jan. 1, he took a blindside hit from Dave Steckel of the Washington Capitals. Then, four days later, defenceman Victor Hedman of the Tampa Bay Lightning hit Crosby, whose head appeared to strike the glass.
Neither one of the hits was particularly vicious. In fact, the Penguins say he felt fine after the first check and that it wasn’t until after the second one that Crosby began to feel that something wasn’t right. Crosby hasn’t played since the Hedman hit, but it isn’t known if either of the hits caused a concussion, or if it was a combination. And such is the mystery of brain injuries — every brain is different and, as such, there always are a lot of unanswered questions in terms of cause, effect and healing time.
When he left the game, Crosby had 66 points, including 32 goals, in 41 games. Without the injury, you can forget the Hart Trophy discussion because it belonged to him.
He started out day-to-day. Now, however, he hasn’t played in four months. And, really, who is to say his career won’t feel a long-term impact?
In fact, what if Sid the Kid doesn’t play again?
If Crosby doesn’t feel well enough to start next season, and that is five months away, might that be the impetus to put concussion awareness over the top?
Because it has become as evident as the nose on your face that the time has come for action, particularly in leagues and organizations that deal with young people. That action has to deal with preventing concussions, as opposed to treating them. The medical evidence is mounting that one concussion is one too many.
If you missed it, researchers said Monday that the brain of former NFL player Dave Duerson showed damage. The evidence was “indisputable,“ said Dr. Ann McKee, an expert in the field of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy).
Duerson, a former NFL defensive back, committed suicide on Feb. 17. After preparing a note asking that his brain go to the NFL “brain bank,” he shot himself in the chest. Duerson, who retired in 1993, was just 50 years of age.
“Dave Duerson had classic pathology of CTE and no evidence of any other disease,” McKee said, “and he has severe involvement of all the (brain) structures that affect things like judgment, inhibition, impulse control, mood and memory.”
In the U.S., most of the focus on concussions is falling on football, and rightfully so.
In an op-ed piece in USA TODAY last week, Katherine Chretien, an associate professor of medicine at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., wrote that “football will always be engrained in the fabric of our country, but can we make it a sport that limits long-term brain damage of its players? The brains of our children and the future love of the game are depending on it.”
Earlier, she had pointed out that CTE “might not be limited to professional level play. It probably starts much earlier. The question is when? At what age?”
And those are the $64,000 questions when it comes to young people and sports. Research has shown that while repetitive collisions in practices and during games may not result in concussions there still may be damage done. In many instances, rest will help the brain heal; what isn’t known is at what point the damage becomes permanent.
Today, the only way to test for CTE is for researchers to examine a brain, meaning someone has to have died. The key, then, is to work to prevent concussions.
The CFL will hold a news conference today and the topic of conversation is expected to be concussion awareness. You just know that this subject is on the mind of every football player in North America.
Yesterday, on TSN radio, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, according to a tweet from TSN’s Darren Dreger, acknowledged “concern over head hits and concussion issues in the NHL. Says the sport in general needs to do more.”
He is correct. But while it is important that hockey at all levels do more in terms of concussion treatment, it is imperative that it also work to prevent concussions.
After all, the concussion that doesn’t happen doesn’t need treatment, nor does it result in today’s athlete slurring his or her words later in life.
(Gregg Drinnan is sports editor of The Daily News. He is at gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca, gdrinnan.blogspot.com and twitter.com/gdrinnan.)
Showing posts with label chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Show all posts
Monday, May 2, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Concussions, young people not a good mix
This week, Frontline, the award-winning news magazine TV show that is a staple on PBS, shone a light on seriously competitive high school football in Arkansas.
Watching it was a hypnotic and frightening experience.
The mind was numbed by adults, all of them safely out of harm’s way, sending young men onto the playing field with instructions to maim the opposition.
It was frightening to listen to teenagers talk of how this is now and it is now that is important, that there will be time in the future to deal with the pain.
While Football High dealt with various types of coaching methods and injuries — two players ended up in hospital due to heatstroke (one died; the other came out of a medically induced coma and returned to the playing field) — it managed to shed even more light on the problem of concussions in sports involving young people.
This, to be sure, is an inexact science.
CTE — chronic traumatic encephalopathy — has been found in the brains of a number of former professional football and hockey players. Very little research has been doing involving the brains of young athletes, primarily because one needs to die before the brain can be examined — sliced and diced, basically — by a neuropathologist.
However, Football High referenced Owen Thomas, a player with the University of Pennsylvania football team. A team captain, Thomas was 21 when he committed suicide in April 2010.
When his brain was examined, researchers were stunned to discover it was in the early stages of CTE.
Why were they so surprised?
Because Thomas had never been diagnosed with a concussion. Not even once.
This discovery was just one more step towards what appears to be an inevitable conclusion.
“Because a young athlete’s brain is still developing,” explains part of the discussion at pbs.org, “the effects of a concussion, or even many smaller hits over a season, can be far more detrimental, compared to head injury in an older player.”
There also was reference to a study conducted by Purdue University researchers who looked at the “cognitive impairment of high school football players.”
Professor Tom Talavage told Frontline: “By the end of the season we found that in 50 percent of the players (who) were brought in not concussed, we were detecting changes, either in their computer-based testing and/or in their functional MRI data, showing that something had changed in the way their brain was performing a particular set of simple tasks.”
Yes, the warning signs are everywhere.
And, if they aren’t already, the adults who make the rules under which children and teenagers play hockey need to sit up straight and pay attention.
Of everything I have read involving concussions and hockey, two paragraphs stand out above the rest. They were from a story written by The Globe and Mail’s Allan Maki following a chat with Dave Adolph, the head coach of the U of Saskatchewan Huskies hockey team.
“(Adolph) wonders, too,” wrote Maki, “why every hit now has to be so punishing, as if the intent is to hurt the opponent, especially if he’s in a vulnerable position.”
Maki then quoted Adolph: “There’s no more angling (off a puck carrier), especially in junior hockey. They’re trying to put someone out of the game. Before, kids would get their sticks up (as protection) and you’d see more high-sticking penalties. Now you see them get crushed and their heads ricochet off the glass.”
Adolph’s words should carry added weight in today’s game, and not only because he is a highly respected coach.
He also is the father of Max Adolph, a forward with the WHL’s Kelowna Rockets.
Max’s hockey career may be in jeopardy.
You guessed it.
He is struggling with post-concussion syndrome and played in only 36 games this season.
Adolph, who turned 18 on April 1, first was injured during a game in Portland on Oct. 30. He took a high, hard hit while he was on the cycle in the Winterhawks’ zone. He was back in the lineup Nov. 24, but left in January with a head injury. He came back early in February but didn’t feel right and left again two weeks later.
Adolph went home to Saskatoon last month for some family time. In one conversation with his father, the coach, a life message was delivered.
“I wanted to reassure him there’s more to life and that he’ll find something he enjoys doing (beyond hockey),” Dave Adolph told Maki. “We wanted to make sure he knows that.”
Max Adolph watched the Rockets’ playoff game from the stands in Kelowna on Wednesday night.
All young athletes should know that there is life after hockey, or whatever their chosen sport is, and that as you mature you shouldn’t have to wonder if you’ll be able to remember the date of your partner’s birthday as you grow old.
In a recent edition of the Vancouver Province, sports columnist Ed Willes wrote about Steven Rice, whose NHL career was cut short at the age of 27 after he had been through at least eight concussions.
These days, Rice told Willes, “I have very limited memories of my career.”
Steven Rice is 39 years of age.
gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca
gdrinnan.blogspot.com
Taking Note on Twitter
Watching it was a hypnotic and frightening experience.
The mind was numbed by adults, all of them safely out of harm’s way, sending young men onto the playing field with instructions to maim the opposition.
It was frightening to listen to teenagers talk of how this is now and it is now that is important, that there will be time in the future to deal with the pain.
While Football High dealt with various types of coaching methods and injuries — two players ended up in hospital due to heatstroke (one died; the other came out of a medically induced coma and returned to the playing field) — it managed to shed even more light on the problem of concussions in sports involving young people.
This, to be sure, is an inexact science.
CTE — chronic traumatic encephalopathy — has been found in the brains of a number of former professional football and hockey players. Very little research has been doing involving the brains of young athletes, primarily because one needs to die before the brain can be examined — sliced and diced, basically — by a neuropathologist.
However, Football High referenced Owen Thomas, a player with the University of Pennsylvania football team. A team captain, Thomas was 21 when he committed suicide in April 2010.
When his brain was examined, researchers were stunned to discover it was in the early stages of CTE.
Why were they so surprised?
Because Thomas had never been diagnosed with a concussion. Not even once.
This discovery was just one more step towards what appears to be an inevitable conclusion.
“Because a young athlete’s brain is still developing,” explains part of the discussion at pbs.org, “the effects of a concussion, or even many smaller hits over a season, can be far more detrimental, compared to head injury in an older player.”
There also was reference to a study conducted by Purdue University researchers who looked at the “cognitive impairment of high school football players.”
Professor Tom Talavage told Frontline: “By the end of the season we found that in 50 percent of the players (who) were brought in not concussed, we were detecting changes, either in their computer-based testing and/or in their functional MRI data, showing that something had changed in the way their brain was performing a particular set of simple tasks.”
Yes, the warning signs are everywhere.
And, if they aren’t already, the adults who make the rules under which children and teenagers play hockey need to sit up straight and pay attention.
Of everything I have read involving concussions and hockey, two paragraphs stand out above the rest. They were from a story written by The Globe and Mail’s Allan Maki following a chat with Dave Adolph, the head coach of the U of Saskatchewan Huskies hockey team.
“(Adolph) wonders, too,” wrote Maki, “why every hit now has to be so punishing, as if the intent is to hurt the opponent, especially if he’s in a vulnerable position.”
Maki then quoted Adolph: “There’s no more angling (off a puck carrier), especially in junior hockey. They’re trying to put someone out of the game. Before, kids would get their sticks up (as protection) and you’d see more high-sticking penalties. Now you see them get crushed and their heads ricochet off the glass.”
Adolph’s words should carry added weight in today’s game, and not only because he is a highly respected coach.
He also is the father of Max Adolph, a forward with the WHL’s Kelowna Rockets.
Max’s hockey career may be in jeopardy.
You guessed it.
He is struggling with post-concussion syndrome and played in only 36 games this season.
Adolph, who turned 18 on April 1, first was injured during a game in Portland on Oct. 30. He took a high, hard hit while he was on the cycle in the Winterhawks’ zone. He was back in the lineup Nov. 24, but left in January with a head injury. He came back early in February but didn’t feel right and left again two weeks later.
Adolph went home to Saskatoon last month for some family time. In one conversation with his father, the coach, a life message was delivered.
“I wanted to reassure him there’s more to life and that he’ll find something he enjoys doing (beyond hockey),” Dave Adolph told Maki. “We wanted to make sure he knows that.”
Max Adolph watched the Rockets’ playoff game from the stands in Kelowna on Wednesday night.
All young athletes should know that there is life after hockey, or whatever their chosen sport is, and that as you mature you shouldn’t have to wonder if you’ll be able to remember the date of your partner’s birthday as you grow old.
In a recent edition of the Vancouver Province, sports columnist Ed Willes wrote about Steven Rice, whose NHL career was cut short at the age of 27 after he had been through at least eight concussions.
These days, Rice told Willes, “I have very limited memories of my career.”
Steven Rice is 39 years of age.
gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca
gdrinnan.blogspot.com
Taking Note on Twitter
Monday, April 4, 2011
Get ready to hear about CTE
CTE.
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.
No, it isn’t something caused by a mosquito bite.
Get ready, because you are going to be reading and hearing a lot about CTE over the next few years.
It is going to be everywhere in sports as scientists do more and more research into what is a fairly recent discovery.
What we now know as CTE used to be known as punch-drunk syndrome and was thought to apply strictly to ‘old’ boxers; in fact, it was given its own medical name — dementia pugilistica.
But then along came Dr. Bennet Omalu, a forensic pathologist and neuropathologist who decided there was something more to this than slurred words and some old boxers.
In 2002, Dr. Omalu took a long, hard look at the brain that had belonged to Mike Webster, a Pro Bowl centre with the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers.
Webster was dead at 50, his fall quick, hard and unbelievable.
In a startling and frightening story that appeared in GQ in October 2009, Jeanne Marie Laskas wrote: “How does a guy go from four Super Bowl rings to . . . pissing in his own oven and squirting Super Glue on his rotting teeth?”
Dr. Omalu examined Webster’s brain and that is how he came to discover CTE which, in a recent paper in which he was involved that was published in the journal Neurology, is described as “a progressive neurodegenerative syndrome caused by single, episodic or repetitive blunt force impacts to the head and transfer of acceleration-deceleration forces to the brain.”
Webster, it turned out, had CTE.
Dr. Omalu later examined the brain of Terry Long, a Steelers offensive lineman who was dead at 45. He drank antifreeze.
There were more brains after that, but by now you get the idea. If you don’t, chase down Laskas’s story on the Internet and read it.
CTE is all about abnormal amounts of a protein called Tau. In over-simplified terms, a hit to the head can result in this protein appearing in the brain. During recovery, the Tau disappears, swallowed up by healthy brain cells. However, more blows result in more protein and eventually the healthy brain cells become overwhelmed and surrender.
The result is CTE.
And it is because of CTE that the people who control the way hockey is played at all levels are going to have to make some adjustments.
It is why the days of fighting in junior hockey are numbered. They have to be. The OHL already has moved to ban headshots. The QMJHL and the WHL have to follow suit before another season arrives. And if you are going to ban headshots, you have to outlaw fighting.
It’s one thing to have high-salaried professionals pounding on each other and a completely different thing when adults allow teenagers to punch each other in the mush.
Granted, there is no hard-and-fast evidence right now that says fighting in hockey causes CTE. But the evidence continues to mount and you would have to be a fool to ignore it.
Last month, two former NHL enforcers, Marty McSorley and Rob Ray, acknowledged that they are experiencing memory loss. McSorley, 47, had 273 fights during his NHL career, while Ray, 42, fought 287 times. Who knows how many bouts they had on their way to the NHL?
In a New York Times story early in March, neither would acknowledge that fighting played a major part in whatever difficulties they now experience.
“Think of how many times you’re hit during a game, and your head whips back or sideways,” Ray said. “I couldn’t sit here and say that fighting didn’t play any part in the damage, but it’s such a small part compared with the play on the ice.”
Earlier this year, researchers at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at the Boston University School of Medicine examined the brain of Bob Probert, another former NHL enforcer. Yes, they found CTE.
Later, Probert’s widow, Dani, told The New York Times that her husband in his last couple of years “exhibited some behaviour uncharacteristic to him, especially memory loss and a tendency to lose his temper while driving.”
Think about that for a moment.
And then think about the hockey we witnessed at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver. Think about the hockey that thrills us every year at the World Junior Championship. Think about any international hockey competition.
There isn’t any fighting and the entertainment value doesn’t seem to suffer.
Concussions and headshots will be on the agenda when the WHL holds its annual meeting in June.
Those gathered will hear from the competition committee, a four-man group that is chaired by Kelly McCrimmon, the owner, general manager and head coach of the Brandon Wheat Kings, and also includes three other GMs — Scott Bonner of the Vancouver Giants, Kelly Kisio of the Calgary Hitmen and Tim Speltz of the Spokane Chiefs.
There were more than 800 fights during the WHL’s 2010-11 regular season. WHL players have experienced more than 100 concussions this season.
The WHL is to be given full marks for reporting concussions the way it does, and for the protocol it has put in place. This, no doubt, is one of the reasons why the tally has gone over 100.
But hopefully the league will take action in June that will help get that number down, way down.
After all, we wouldn’t want any of today’s players to be putting Super Glue on rotting teeth in 30 years now, would we?
gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca
gdrinnan.blogspot.com
Taking Note on Twitter
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.
No, it isn’t something caused by a mosquito bite.
Get ready, because you are going to be reading and hearing a lot about CTE over the next few years.
It is going to be everywhere in sports as scientists do more and more research into what is a fairly recent discovery.
What we now know as CTE used to be known as punch-drunk syndrome and was thought to apply strictly to ‘old’ boxers; in fact, it was given its own medical name — dementia pugilistica.
But then along came Dr. Bennet Omalu, a forensic pathologist and neuropathologist who decided there was something more to this than slurred words and some old boxers.
In 2002, Dr. Omalu took a long, hard look at the brain that had belonged to Mike Webster, a Pro Bowl centre with the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers.
Webster was dead at 50, his fall quick, hard and unbelievable.
In a startling and frightening story that appeared in GQ in October 2009, Jeanne Marie Laskas wrote: “How does a guy go from four Super Bowl rings to . . . pissing in his own oven and squirting Super Glue on his rotting teeth?”
Dr. Omalu examined Webster’s brain and that is how he came to discover CTE which, in a recent paper in which he was involved that was published in the journal Neurology, is described as “a progressive neurodegenerative syndrome caused by single, episodic or repetitive blunt force impacts to the head and transfer of acceleration-deceleration forces to the brain.”
Webster, it turned out, had CTE.
Dr. Omalu later examined the brain of Terry Long, a Steelers offensive lineman who was dead at 45. He drank antifreeze.
There were more brains after that, but by now you get the idea. If you don’t, chase down Laskas’s story on the Internet and read it.
CTE is all about abnormal amounts of a protein called Tau. In over-simplified terms, a hit to the head can result in this protein appearing in the brain. During recovery, the Tau disappears, swallowed up by healthy brain cells. However, more blows result in more protein and eventually the healthy brain cells become overwhelmed and surrender.
The result is CTE.
And it is because of CTE that the people who control the way hockey is played at all levels are going to have to make some adjustments.
It is why the days of fighting in junior hockey are numbered. They have to be. The OHL already has moved to ban headshots. The QMJHL and the WHL have to follow suit before another season arrives. And if you are going to ban headshots, you have to outlaw fighting.
It’s one thing to have high-salaried professionals pounding on each other and a completely different thing when adults allow teenagers to punch each other in the mush.
Granted, there is no hard-and-fast evidence right now that says fighting in hockey causes CTE. But the evidence continues to mount and you would have to be a fool to ignore it.
Last month, two former NHL enforcers, Marty McSorley and Rob Ray, acknowledged that they are experiencing memory loss. McSorley, 47, had 273 fights during his NHL career, while Ray, 42, fought 287 times. Who knows how many bouts they had on their way to the NHL?
In a New York Times story early in March, neither would acknowledge that fighting played a major part in whatever difficulties they now experience.
“Think of how many times you’re hit during a game, and your head whips back or sideways,” Ray said. “I couldn’t sit here and say that fighting didn’t play any part in the damage, but it’s such a small part compared with the play on the ice.”
Earlier this year, researchers at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at the Boston University School of Medicine examined the brain of Bob Probert, another former NHL enforcer. Yes, they found CTE.
Later, Probert’s widow, Dani, told The New York Times that her husband in his last couple of years “exhibited some behaviour uncharacteristic to him, especially memory loss and a tendency to lose his temper while driving.”
Think about that for a moment.
And then think about the hockey we witnessed at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver. Think about the hockey that thrills us every year at the World Junior Championship. Think about any international hockey competition.
There isn’t any fighting and the entertainment value doesn’t seem to suffer.
Concussions and headshots will be on the agenda when the WHL holds its annual meeting in June.
Those gathered will hear from the competition committee, a four-man group that is chaired by Kelly McCrimmon, the owner, general manager and head coach of the Brandon Wheat Kings, and also includes three other GMs — Scott Bonner of the Vancouver Giants, Kelly Kisio of the Calgary Hitmen and Tim Speltz of the Spokane Chiefs.
There were more than 800 fights during the WHL’s 2010-11 regular season. WHL players have experienced more than 100 concussions this season.
The WHL is to be given full marks for reporting concussions the way it does, and for the protocol it has put in place. This, no doubt, is one of the reasons why the tally has gone over 100.
But hopefully the league will take action in June that will help get that number down, way down.
After all, we wouldn’t want any of today’s players to be putting Super Glue on rotting teeth in 30 years now, would we?
gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca
gdrinnan.blogspot.com
Taking Note on Twitter
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Concussions, CTE mean it's time for fighting to go
The time has come to rid major junior hockey of fighting.
There. I said it.
And you know what?
It doesn’t feel half bad. In fact, it feels pretty good.
Having been around the WHL for more than 30 years, I have long been a drinker of the Kool-Aid. When hockey people would say that fighting is an integral part of the game, that a fight could swing a game’s momentum one way or the other, that players rarely got injured in a fight, I would nod my head in agreement.
Fighting, the hockey lifers will tell you, has always been part of the game.
And it has been. Just like the centre-ice red line. And goaltenders handling the puck without restrictions. And obstruction. And one referee.
But now it’s time for fighting to go.
Why?
Because the time has come for the WHL to rid its game of headshots. It has to do this because it is imperative that it do more to protect its young players from concussions.
And it would be hypocritical to invoke a ban on headshots and not take fighting out of the game.
How can you ban headshots while saying it’s OK for two players to stand there and punch each other in the face?
My thinking started to change about the time that researchers at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at the Boston University School of Medicine revealed that an examination of the brain of former NHLer Reggie Fleming, a disturber in the 1960s who died in 2009, showed indications of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
Then, in the last while, the same researchers found CTE in the brain of former NHL enforcer Bob Probert.
That, along with some on-ice happenings, has made headshots and concussions the hot-button topic in and around hockey at all levels.
Also influencing my thinking were incidents involving Sidney Crosby and Killian Hutt, Zdeno Chara on Max Pacioretty, Matt Cooke on Marc Savard and on and on.
And then came an email from the mother of a WHL player. She expressed concern over the number of concussions and head injuries in the WHL this season, a figure that now has reached at least 100. This wasn’t your ordinary email, because it came from a professional who provided documentation, some of it frightening, to every statement she made.
It is most obvious that, while the study of concussions and their long-term effects is in its infancy, head injuries no longer can be looked at in the short term. Studies that have been done contain too many words and phrases like “ongoing impairment” and “recurrent or cumulative damage” and “chronic neurocognitive impairment” and “early onset of dementia.”
During the 2009-10 season, a group of medical professionals, including Dr. Charles Tator, who is considered Canada’s pre-eminent expert on sport concussions, put together the Hockey Concussion Education Project, a study involving “67 male fourth-tier ice hockey players from two teams.”
Physicians involved attended 52 regular-season games involving junior-aged players and observed 21 concussions to 17 players. “A concussion was diagnosed in 19 (36.5 per cent) of 52 observed games,” the resulting report reads.
It is interesting, too, that “no concussions that occurred in practices were reported by either team during the study. Previous sport concussion studies demonstrated that concussion predominantly occurs in game situations.”
The professionals involved in this study, however, ran into some problems.
As they reported: “Complaints by coaches, players and parents concerning the inconvenience of multiple physician visits for serial testing and evaluation were common. The reluctance to report concussion symptoms and to follow such protocols likely results from certain cultural factors such as athletes asserting their masculinity by playing through the discomfort of an injury, and the belief that winning is more important than the athlete’s long-term health.”
The report summarized that “the incidence of concussion in fourth-tier junior ice hockey players was significantly greater than has previously been reported in the literature for this age group.”
Another report — this one by Drs. Jeffrey S. Kutcher, Christopher C. Giza and Anthony G. Alessi, titled simply Sports Concussion — concludes with this:
“Increasing animal and human data suggest that the developing brain’s reaction to concussive injury is distinct from the mature brain, and that age-specific clinical guidelines for concussion management be developed, with perhaps a more conservative approach to assessment and recovery.”
You don’t have to look very hard to find warning signs and lots of them.
According to one study involving U.S. college football players, those who suffered one concussion “were 3.4 times more likely than uninjured teammates to sustain a subsequent concussion during the same season.”
And then there is this from a study titled Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy: A Potential Late Effect of Sport-Related Concussive and Subconcussive Head Trauma:
“A minority of cases with neuropathologically documented CTE developed dementia before death; the relative infrequency of dementia in individuals with CTE may be due in part to many individuals with CTE having committed suicide or died from accidents or drug overdoses at an early age.”
Unfortunately, the only way to diagnose CTE is through the examination of a brain, although efforts are being made, according to this report, “to identify biomarkers to detect the disease and monitor its progression and to develop therapies to slow or reverse its course.”
In the meantime, the WHL, indeed all of hockey, owes it to the athletes to do more to protect them from themselves.
“It is widely accepted that the symptomatic effects of up to 90 per cent of concussions are short-lived, lasting only seven to 10 days,” reads the report titled Sports Concussion. “This viewpoint puts sports concussion in the light of being a transient phenomenon with little or no long-lasting effects. There is increasing concern, however, that this may not be the case.”
It is imperative, then, that the WHL and other junior hockey leagues err on the side of caution and work harder to get headshots — and fighting — out of the game. According to hockeyfights.com, there were more than 800 fights in the WHL’s 792 regular-season games in 2010-11.
The adults charged with the care of these players must do all they can to protect their charges.
It is becoming more and more evident that the cost of not doing so is far too high.
(Gregg Drinnan is sports editor of The Daily News. He is at gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca, gdrinnan.blogspot.com and twitter.com/gdrinnan.)
There. I said it.
And you know what?
It doesn’t feel half bad. In fact, it feels pretty good.
Having been around the WHL for more than 30 years, I have long been a drinker of the Kool-Aid. When hockey people would say that fighting is an integral part of the game, that a fight could swing a game’s momentum one way or the other, that players rarely got injured in a fight, I would nod my head in agreement.
Fighting, the hockey lifers will tell you, has always been part of the game.
And it has been. Just like the centre-ice red line. And goaltenders handling the puck without restrictions. And obstruction. And one referee.
But now it’s time for fighting to go.
Why?
Because the time has come for the WHL to rid its game of headshots. It has to do this because it is imperative that it do more to protect its young players from concussions.
And it would be hypocritical to invoke a ban on headshots and not take fighting out of the game.
How can you ban headshots while saying it’s OK for two players to stand there and punch each other in the face?
My thinking started to change about the time that researchers at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at the Boston University School of Medicine revealed that an examination of the brain of former NHLer Reggie Fleming, a disturber in the 1960s who died in 2009, showed indications of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
Then, in the last while, the same researchers found CTE in the brain of former NHL enforcer Bob Probert.
That, along with some on-ice happenings, has made headshots and concussions the hot-button topic in and around hockey at all levels.
Also influencing my thinking were incidents involving Sidney Crosby and Killian Hutt, Zdeno Chara on Max Pacioretty, Matt Cooke on Marc Savard and on and on.
And then came an email from the mother of a WHL player. She expressed concern over the number of concussions and head injuries in the WHL this season, a figure that now has reached at least 100. This wasn’t your ordinary email, because it came from a professional who provided documentation, some of it frightening, to every statement she made.
It is most obvious that, while the study of concussions and their long-term effects is in its infancy, head injuries no longer can be looked at in the short term. Studies that have been done contain too many words and phrases like “ongoing impairment” and “recurrent or cumulative damage” and “chronic neurocognitive impairment” and “early onset of dementia.”
During the 2009-10 season, a group of medical professionals, including Dr. Charles Tator, who is considered Canada’s pre-eminent expert on sport concussions, put together the Hockey Concussion Education Project, a study involving “67 male fourth-tier ice hockey players from two teams.”
Physicians involved attended 52 regular-season games involving junior-aged players and observed 21 concussions to 17 players. “A concussion was diagnosed in 19 (36.5 per cent) of 52 observed games,” the resulting report reads.
It is interesting, too, that “no concussions that occurred in practices were reported by either team during the study. Previous sport concussion studies demonstrated that concussion predominantly occurs in game situations.”
The professionals involved in this study, however, ran into some problems.
As they reported: “Complaints by coaches, players and parents concerning the inconvenience of multiple physician visits for serial testing and evaluation were common. The reluctance to report concussion symptoms and to follow such protocols likely results from certain cultural factors such as athletes asserting their masculinity by playing through the discomfort of an injury, and the belief that winning is more important than the athlete’s long-term health.”
The report summarized that “the incidence of concussion in fourth-tier junior ice hockey players was significantly greater than has previously been reported in the literature for this age group.”
Another report — this one by Drs. Jeffrey S. Kutcher, Christopher C. Giza and Anthony G. Alessi, titled simply Sports Concussion — concludes with this:
“Increasing animal and human data suggest that the developing brain’s reaction to concussive injury is distinct from the mature brain, and that age-specific clinical guidelines for concussion management be developed, with perhaps a more conservative approach to assessment and recovery.”
You don’t have to look very hard to find warning signs and lots of them.
According to one study involving U.S. college football players, those who suffered one concussion “were 3.4 times more likely than uninjured teammates to sustain a subsequent concussion during the same season.”
And then there is this from a study titled Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy: A Potential Late Effect of Sport-Related Concussive and Subconcussive Head Trauma:
“A minority of cases with neuropathologically documented CTE developed dementia before death; the relative infrequency of dementia in individuals with CTE may be due in part to many individuals with CTE having committed suicide or died from accidents or drug overdoses at an early age.”
Unfortunately, the only way to diagnose CTE is through the examination of a brain, although efforts are being made, according to this report, “to identify biomarkers to detect the disease and monitor its progression and to develop therapies to slow or reverse its course.”
In the meantime, the WHL, indeed all of hockey, owes it to the athletes to do more to protect them from themselves.
“It is widely accepted that the symptomatic effects of up to 90 per cent of concussions are short-lived, lasting only seven to 10 days,” reads the report titled Sports Concussion. “This viewpoint puts sports concussion in the light of being a transient phenomenon with little or no long-lasting effects. There is increasing concern, however, that this may not be the case.”
It is imperative, then, that the WHL and other junior hockey leagues err on the side of caution and work harder to get headshots — and fighting — out of the game. According to hockeyfights.com, there were more than 800 fights in the WHL’s 792 regular-season games in 2010-11.
The adults charged with the care of these players must do all they can to protect their charges.
It is becoming more and more evident that the cost of not doing so is far too high.
(Gregg Drinnan is sports editor of The Daily News. He is at gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca, gdrinnan.blogspot.com and twitter.com/gdrinnan.)
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