A Look at the Vital Need for Concussion Research with Dr. Sills
Dr. Allen Sills presenting at the American Association of Neurological Surgeons Annual Meeting on April 29, 2022.
By John Denny, Executive Director, Chuck Noll Foundation for Brain Injury Research
If you think keeping kids out of team contact sports is good for their health, think again.
Kids need to play. Kids need to exercise. Kids need to develop social skills like teamwork and leadership. Team sports help kids in all these areas – in both contact and non-contact sports.
However, there is a false narrative that if your kid plays contact sports – football, hockey, soccer, wrestling, etc., – he or she will inevitably sustain a concussion, which will lead to Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. Parents are concerned -- I get it. My son played football all through college and my daughter played every sport imaginable. But let’s start with some facts:
Concussions are serious, but very treatable;
Playing contact sports is safer today than ever before;
More research on diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of head injuries resulting from sports activities is needed;
This includes more research on CTE., but there remains a big difference between correlation and causation;
Obesity and juvenile diabetes is on the rise. Our kids need to get healthy.
At the recent American Association of Neurosurgeons (AANS) Conference in Philadelphia, Dr. Allen Sills, Founder and Co-Director of the Vanderbilt Sports Concussion Center and Chief Medical Officer of the NFL, presented the Chuck Noll Foundation for Brain Injury Research Lecture. In it, he presented a number of facts starting with the significant improvements in concussion management in the NFL. Through increased data collection, rule changes, and equipment improvements, the NFL reduced the number of concussions by 30% to 224 between preseason and regular season games in 2019.
The improvements in the protocol made since 2018 include: defining impact seizure and fencing responses as independent signs of potential loss of consciousness, representing “No-Go” criteria, requiring an evaluation for all players demonstrating gross motor instability to determine the cause of the instability, and requiring all players who undergo any concussion evaluation on game day to have a follow-up evaluation conducted the next day by a member of the medical staff.
Rule changes in football include: banning blind side blocking, no more running leaps to block a field goal, and the new kick off rule-- all of which are making play at every level safer. And finally, equipment changes have occurred including the installation of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags inside of the equipment, which detect impact. These RFID tags help the league to collect more information than ever before about the duration and direction of head impacts players experience based on their positions, both during practices and games. The NFL then breaks down the concussion causing impacts and collects information on the players position, acceleration, and forces. This data has helped the NFL develop position specific helmets to help reduce the number of concussions suffered.
But just making football safer isn’t enough. Women’s soccer is the number two cause for concussions from sports. And Equestrian sports are also an area whose participants experience high rates of concussions. But as I said, concussions are treatable and sports, especially team sports, are important for our youth.
The Chuck Noll Foundation for Brain Injury Research is dedicated to investing in research so that all youth can continue playing sports – and every parent can feel better about supporting their child’s love of the game.