On November 17, 2011 Canada will mark a National Day of Remembrance for Road Crash Victims. As of today close to 168,000 people have been injured. Of these 168,000 people, a significant percentage have suffered some degree of a brain injury from mild to traumatic which in some way can effect their lives and the lives of their loved ones. Let us remember not only those who have passed away but also those who have suffered a life altering injury.
National Day of Remembrance for Road Crash Victims – November 17th, 2010
We’ve long known that hits to the head can cause devastating concussions affecting memory, judgment, behaviour, reflexes and coordination. Now a new study of junior hockey players suggests the incidence of brain injury is seven times higher than previously reported.
The study of two junior hockey teams found that one-quarter of the players suffered a concussion during the last season — 80 per cent of them caused by intentional hits. Nearly a third of the victims also suffered a second concussion. An estimated 15,000 to 20,000 younger players suffer needless concussions every season.
This groundbreaking study is called the Hockey Education Concussion Project — a signal from its authors that concussions are a public health issue that requires action from hockey officials, but also increased awareness at all levels of society. Players, parents and coaches must recognize that when a concussion is suspected, the player be seen by a doctor before returning to the ice.
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Recent moves to study contact sports’ effects on brain health could help protect the next generation of athletes.
Pro athletes, current and past National Football League players, doctors and researchers have formed the Mackey-White Traumatic Brain Injury Committee, and began meeting in January. They are exploring football-related brain injuries and examining research with an eye toward recommending changes to enhance player safety.
And in Boston, former Harvard football player and World Wrestling Entertainment wrestler Chris Nowinski is heading up the Sports Legacy Institute. SLI works with Boston University Medical School to explore the effects of concussion on the brain. The institute is enlisting athletes to register for annual testing and asking them to donate their brains after death for further research.
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Colleagues and Friends,
I am writing to tell you about a book that may be of interest to you.
In 1997, my wife acquired a severe brain injury in an automobile accident. Since then I have been studying how people recover from and live purposeful lives with a brain injury. I have written many articles for brain injury publications and have just published my first book, Successfully Surviving a Brain Injury: A Family Guidebook, From the Emergency Room to Selecting a Rehabilitation Facility.
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Behaviour changes the only way to measure seriousness of injury
By Tom Spears, The Ottawa Citizen November 7, 2010
There are no pictures of a concussion. Medical scans can show a gunshot wound easily. They can show a skull fracture, or brain damage from a stroke.
But concussions are invisible to medical technology, because their damage is on a microscopic level.
“Concussions are an electrical problem. It’s basically a disconnect for the electrons — a minor change in the brain itself,” says Dr. David Warren, a specialist in children’s emergency medicine and teacher at the University of Western Ontario’s medical school.
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Everyone agrees concussions are a growing problem for young hockey players. But as Wayne Scanlan reports, not everyone agrees on how to fix it.
By Wayne Scanlan, The Ottawa Citizen November 7, 2010
Jakob Lavergne loves hockey as much as any competitive 13-year-old in the Ottawa area.
He can’t remember a day when he didn’t have a hockey stick in his hand and a smile on his face. Blessed with quick feet and a heavy shot for a smaller defenceman (5-3, 117 pounds), Lavergne is a key player on the Ottawa Sting minor bantam AA team.
Jakob will tell you, though, that he doesn’t play the game with the same freewheeling abandon he once did. He plays with a heightened awareness, bordering on healthy fear. His “Spidey Sense” is often tingling, as the friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man used to say when danger lurked.
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CBC: Junior hockey concussions at ‘alarming’ rate: study
Sympatico: Junior hockey concussions at ‘alarming’ rate: study
ST. PAUL, Minn. – The American Academy of Neurology (AAN) is calling for any athlete who is suspected of having a concussion to be removed from play until the athlete is evaluated by a physician with training in the evaluation and management of sports concussion.
The request is one of five recommendations from a new position statement approved by the AAN’s Board of Directors that targets policymakers with authority over determining the policy procedures for when an athlete suffers from concussion while participating in a sporting activity.
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