KANSAN.COM / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2010 / NEWS
3A
CONCUSSIONS (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
"It ISN'T JUST A LITTLE DING, IT MAKES ITS MARK ON THE BRAIN"
Last week, Rev. Tom Thomas and Rev. Kathy Brearly had their first Thanksgiving without their son.
Owen Thomas was 21 years old and a captain on the University of Pennsylvania's football team when he took his own life in April. His parents called his death impulsive
- they never noticed any signs of depression, nor do they recall Owen complaining of so much as a headache during his football career.
Thomas said his son was someone who pushed himself to the limit academically and athletically and cared deeply for others.
"He just enjoyed life in so many different ways," said Thomas, who himself played football at Penn.
Breaarly said she was surprised when researchers from Boston University called just hours after Owen's death, asking it they could examine his brain for signs of damage from head injuries.
Owen's parents consented — Thomas said he has since volunteered his brain for research — but insisted researchers would not find anything. Months later, they were told Owen's brain showed
early signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease found in athletes with a history of repeated concussions.
The disease associated with
Owen's case is the earliest known appearance of CTE. The impulsive behavior his parents believe led to his suicide is consistent with the disease's symptoms. And while he didn't exhibit signs of a concussion during his career, Owen's CTE could be the result of a series of small concussions over time.
"I can't tell if Owen is the tip of the iceberg as far as these sub-concussions are concerned or were we particularly unlucky?" Brearly asked.
Dr. Kevin Guskiewicz at the University of North Carolina has been recording head impacts for the past six seasons using accelerometers implanted inside the team's football helmets. In that time, he has recorded about 250,000 impacts using what is called HITS (Head Impact Telemetry System)
aging boxes since the 1920s, began cropping up in brain autopsies of former professional football players in recent decades. A July 2009 study written by several of the same doctors who looked at Owen Thomas' brain looked at five former professional players whose autopsies revealed CTE. All died suddenly at middle age. Of the five, two committed suicide, one was killed in a head-on collision during a high speed police chase and one was shot in the head while cleaning his gun.
— a program now owned by the helmet company Riddell.
Surprisingly, he said, UNC's Sports Concussion Research Program found that concussions occur at unpredictable levels of impact. Guskiewicz also found that players experience the same symptoms from concussions regardless of the force of impact.
"The big hits don't necessarily equate to the worst clinical outcomes," Guskiewicz said.
"The big hits don't necessarily equate to the worst clinical outcomes."
DR. KEVIN GUSKIEWICZ UNC concussion researcher
From years of reviewing video of injuries at the University of Kansas, Grant said he noticed many concussions occurred not when a player was hit hard, but when their head bounced
off the ground after impact.
So far HITS has recorded 25 concussions at the University of North Carolina and found that the average starter in college football can expect to receive 950 hits to the head each season, give or take 100.
When one of those hits causes a concussion, Morte said, the brain smacks against the skull and can tear the fibers connected to nerve cells. The damage done to these fibers — and the contusions and blood clots in the brain that can also occur — won't appear on a
CAT scan or MRI, he said.
Morte said players often don't report concussions. When this happens, he said, more injuries will follow with accumulative damage.
"The blows to the head are much more severe than we realized." Morte said. "When somebody gets knocked out, it isn't just a little ding. It makes its mark on the brain."
"SOMETHING BETTER BE DONE NOW OR THEY'RE GOING TO DO AWAY WITH THE GAME"
Novotny and his former coach, Don Fambrough, remember when the most common injury to the head in football was a broken nose. That was when helmets were nowhere near as bulky as they are today and a face mask typically meant a single bar.
"It's night and day," Novotny said. "That thing weighs a ton."
When talking about concussions, Fambrough repeatedly taps his cane on a helmet Mark Mangino signed for him years ago.
"It's a weapon when they come together," Fambrough said. "I can understand why that would cause an injury of some kind."
Fambrough said he thinks today's helmets also lead to risks players from his era would have been reluctant to attempt.
When solutions to address head injuries in the sport are discussed, helmets are often brought up. Most of the Kansas football team wears Riddell, which introduced a new model called the Revolution in 2002.
The helmet is billed by the company to be 31 percent more effective against concussions than previous models. However, Dr. Robert Cantu of Boston University told The New York Times in October that the statistic represented a comparison between brand new Revolution helmets and helmets of unknown age and condition.
The oversight of how helmets are tested for safety has also been questioned. Nearly all helmets have a label on their backsides saying they meet NOCSAE standards. NOCSAE (National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment), is a nonprofit corporation formed in 1969 to test football helmets and its testing procedures have not changed much since the 1970s.
"Our number one goal when developing new helmet technology is not to meet a test standard but to exceed the protection standards," Riddell's vice president of research and development, Thad Ide, said in an e-mail.
Helmet manufacturers test their own helmets during production and there is no independent force to oversee these tests. During the tests a helmet is mounted on a synthetic head model and dropped on a foam rubber pad from different locations and varying temperatures.
Holt said he sticks with the original model and even said since his high school introduced the Revolution helmet two years ago, it has actually seen a spike in concussions.
Not all place blame squarely on the helmet. Guskiewicz said he has been impressed with improvements in helmet technology. However, he said he wasn't sure the answer
dropped to 2.4 per 1,000 in 2005 and has ranged no higher than 2.8 in the last three seasons.
The National Football League gained attention in October when it began fining and threatening suspension for helmet-to-helmet contact. Holt, who is in his second season with San Diego, said the measures won't prevent what is "just part of the game."
"It's like telling a boxer not to hit someone in the head because they're going to not be able to walk later on in their life," he said. "It's just not going to happen."
Holt said he was always taught to lead with his nose, keeping his head up as he tackled. Sometimes, however, he said helmet-to-helmet contact is inevitable. To him, it's just how the game is.
"I just don't see how it's becoming such a shock to people that there's all these concussions and
to concussions is in the helmet.
"It's like telling a boxer not to hit someone in the head ... It's just not going to happen."
JAMES HOLT San Diego Chargers linebacker
"The problem is we sort of want our cake and eat it too." Guskiewicz said.
He said helmets were designed to prevent catastrophic head injuries, such as skull fractures, and not necessarily concussions. Instead, he said the issue is better addressed by focusing on style of play and the game's rules.
In 1976 the NCAA eliminated the head and face as a primary and initial contact area for blocking and tackling. In 2005 the NCAA changed rules to address "spearing" and head-down contact. A ban on hitting opponents with the crown of one's helmet was also introduced shortly thereafter. After the 2005 rules changes, reported concussions decreased slightly. The NCAA's Injury Surveillance Program reported that in 2004, 3.4 out of every 1,000 football players suffered a concussion. That
stuff messing up these players' lives," Holt said.
equipment. Fambrough is afraid if something isn't done soon, the sport that treated him so well may be done away with altogether.
Fambrough is conflicted.
He said the sport is getting out of hand.
Maybe kickoffs should be erased.
Maybe it's the
Yet at the same time, the sport's becoming hard to watch for the old coach as officials, with pressure to crack down on crunching hits, throw more penalty flags than Fambro recalls ever seeing.
"They've got to stop calling all of these damn penalties," he said. "The games last way too long and people get bored."
Holt thinks penalties, fines and suspensions will only hurt defenses. He said defensive players don't know what to do in the NFL when one misstep might cost them tens of thousands of dollars.
"I'm waiting for them to put a belt around their waists and we'll just start playing flag football," Holt said.
"IF REPORTED INCIDENTS ARE ON THE RISE, THAT'S A GOOD THING"
On Thanksgiving morning, Kathy Brearly dressed her son's grave with Christmas decorations as she talked to him. Anything for a little comfort while getting used to having someone so alive in her life one day and gone the next.
She said she checked in on a family that also lost a loved one to suicide. Since Owen's death, Brearly has contacted parents of suicide victims, many who once suffered from concussions. She was amazed to discover the level of misunderstanding even some physicians had about CTE and its effects. She recently received an e-mail from a woman whose husband killed himself shortly after being discharged from the hospital that treated his concussion. The couple had received no instructions to look for suicidal tendencies or other side effects.
"How can that happen?" she
shed. "It's just amazing to me."
What's difficult to deny, though, is the heightened level of discourse about concussions in football. We may have only scratched the surface of what can be known about the injury and its lasting effects, but we're looking at an issue once dismissed as someone being "punch drunk."
"At the beginning of the season the announcers would talk about having your bell rung," Thomas said. "They don't use those terms anymore."
Guskiewicz warned against interpreting the increased attention as signaling an increase in concussions over previous years. Instead, with more awareness come more diagnoses. With a better knowledge of symptoms and effects come more effective response plans. And with more dialogue comes more disclosure from players who may have previously stayed on the field with fatal consequences as a real possibility.
"If the reported incidents of concussions is on the rise then that's actually a good thing," Guskiewicz said. "The word 'reported' there is a key word."
Edited by Tim Dwyer
SENATE (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
commit suicide," the resolution cites from the "International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health."
"I hope this is the beginning on a larger initiative that the University can take to make sure something like that doesn't happen at KU or in our community," said Diane Genther, LGBT Resource Center coordinator and sponsor of the resolution.
Some senators said the bill focused too heavily on the LGBT community and was not inclusive enough. Despite their initial concerns, the resolution passed 40 to one. One additional senator abstained from voting.
The resolution encourages students to know the warning signs of bullying and suicide and encourages the University to engage in research on bullying. It also supports the formation of a taskforce that would address the issue of bullying on school campuses.
Gadd-Nelson is the social welfare senator and director of education
outreach for Queers and Allies. She said Queers and Allies was in the preliminary stages of creating such a taskforce.
"I think the formation of a task-force is a very excellent start," said Alex Earles, legislative director and one of the resolutions co-authors. "But that's just what it is — a start."
Edited by David Cawthon
Despite the gains made Wednesday and the plans for a taskforce, authors of the resolution said the University needed to do much
more to combat bullying.