Guest blogger Marcia Rockwood is a journalist and editor who has worked for DailyHeathNews online, Ms. Magazine, Reader’s Digest, and AARP: The Bulletin. She has won numerous awards, including sharing a National Press Club Award with bestselling humor writer Mary Roach. Skiing, gardening, and taking apart, then putting together very old houses are some of her favorite things.
For Sports Moms –and Dads–across the country, the concussion fear factor may be about to ratchet down a welcome notch. Watching their kids absorb skull-jarring blows on the sports field, –whether it’s rugby, football, ice hockey, soccer, or lacrosse– has caused anxiety for a great many parents. In fact, in CNN’s 2011 list of top health stories, the toll of repeated head blows on NFL players ranked in the top ten. Now new technology is being developed with the aim of signaling when a blow is just a glancing blow–and when it may be a genuine concussion.
What’s behind this new technology? It comes in the form of a high-tech mouthguard equipped with micro-sensors that can detect and record blows being absorbed by the skull–and can help inform coaches and doctors when a player has had too much. This is good news for a country where the CDC says there are an estimated 173,000 sports and recreation-related injuries due to traumatic brain injury (TBI) every year. The hope is that something as simple as a high-tech mouthguards will help bring those numbers down, and results so far look promising.
X-2 Impact, a Seattle-based sports and technology company, is working on a mouthguard project in close research partnership with Stanford University. For X-2 Impact, the story is a very personal one. Co-founder Rich Able’s son, Kyle, was knocked unconscious for three minutes during a high school football game. Afterwards, Able watched as Kyle’s 3.9 grade point average plummeted, and the teenager experienced mood changes, along with cognitive difficulties. It was months before Kyle was back to normal, Able reports. After that, he decided that creating end-to end equipment for the management of sports brain injury would become a lifetime mission.
X-2 Impact has developed a mouthguard that fits onto the upper jaw, which is essentially a fixed part of the human skull. The mouthguard is embedded with miniaturized sensors and uses wireless technology that can be read on a mobile phone application or an iPad by a coach, medic or parent. Before the season, each player undergoes cognitive tests to establish a baseline, then the mouthguard monitors the impact of every tough tackle and head-jarring collision in real time. Most importantly, it signals whether or not injury has been done and if a player needs to be taken out of the game. The player can then be retested to see if the blow has caused any impairment. Christoph Mack, Able’s partner, says that the hope is to make the devices available to clinical practitioners next spring and the following year, direct to consumer.
* Not Just a Clashing of Helmets. While you might think that head-to-head impact does the worst damage to say, a football player, it turns out that this is not always so. A severe tackle to the ground can cause whiplash injuries, according to Christoph Mack. And, he adds, clinicians and researchers worry especially about a fall in which the head rotates. “It’s not always the ‘slapper-knocker’ collision that causes the damage,” says Mack, “sometimes it’s the garden-variety hit that ends up causing the most serious injury.”
* Big Leagues. While the new technology being developed will be aimed primarily at school-age athletes, the Stanford football team is also participating, as is Notre Dame, and the University of Washington, says Mack. Jim L. Mora, chair of the X-2 Impact Advisory Board, has just stepped into the role of head coach at UCLA.
* More Research at Cleveland. The prestigious Cleveland Clinic is conducting its own line of research into what they call the Intelligent Mouthguard. It works with micro-sensors and Bluetooth technology to show the difference between a blow causing typical impact and one causing injury to the brain. Adam Bartsch, Ph.D. and mechanical Engineer on the project, says the great thing is that the device “makes objective what for so many years has been subjective.” He says that researchers hope to have equipment commercially available to clinical practitioners next spring. Other devices being studied at Cleveland include headbands that can measure a blow’s impact on soccer players, who are also at significant risk for concussion. Goals are high: The Cleveland Clinic hopes to be able to work with five million kids in the next five years.
* Bench or Play? Something that’s well understood in the sports world is that athletes may try to minimize or hide injuries to avoid being pulled out of the game. But new interactive tools that will objectively access the force of head blows will allow injured players–especially young ones– to get proper medical evaluation before they return to the game, helping prevent a player who already has a concussion from sustaining a second traumatic brain injury before the first one heals. Such technology has the potential to not only be a game-changer, but a lifesaver.
CONNECT THE DOTS
Also in the works: The National Collegiate Athletic Association reports that a $600,000 grant has been earmarked for study of the biomechanics of concussions and the study of proper helmet fit. For the full report, see NCAA.org. In Ontario, Paul S. Echlin, team physician for junior hockey teams has established a Sport Concussion Library. The site is free and contains sections on hockey, football, soccer and other sports as well. The CDC also offers a “Head’s Up: Concussion in High School,” and “Head’s Up: Concussion in Youth Sports” program to help coaches identify and treat concussion. You might also be interested in these related Healthy Outlook Blog posts: “Stopping Kids’ Sports Injuries is a Team Effort,” “Relief Ahead for Traumatic Brain Injuries,” and “Brain Changes Found in Football Players Without Concussion.”
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