BIANJ’s Concussion in Youth Sports Summit
Last Friday, February 24, 2006, I attended the Brain Injury Association of New Jersey‘s (BIANJ) Concussion in Youth’s Sports Summit (PDF) held at the Stadium Club at Giant’s Stadium. The packed room audience of physicians, psychologists, other medical providers and school trainers and coaches were treated to an outstanding group of speakers on the topic of concussion in youth sports.
The summit was moderated by Dr. Steve Adubato, a four-time Emmy award winning anchor for Channel 13/WNET (PBS) who did an outstanding job at moderating and ensuring wonderful participation from those in attendance.
The keynote speaker, Robert C. Cantu, who is chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery and Director of Sports Medicine at Emerson Hospital discussed the evolution of understanding concussions. Dr. Cantu, who has authored over 280 scientific publications including 17 books on neurology and sports medicine, provided the audience with the evolution of sports concussion guidelines in America.
To help us understand the scope and depth of the problem of concussion in sports was Wesley Rutland-Brown, MPH an epidemiologist at the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from Atlanta, GA. Mr. Rutland-Brown shared with us data collected by the CDC which included the fact that children between the ages of 5 and 14 have 235,000 emergency department visits as a result of traumatic brain injury, 22,000 hospitalizations and 16,000 deaths on a yearly basis. According to one researcher, an estimated 300,000 sports and recreation-related mild to moderate TBI’s occur in this country every year while an additional 750,000 to 2.25 million additional sport’s related concussions go unidentified each year.
To appreciate the significance of this epidemic, Rutland-Brown disclosed that 5.1% of football players sustained a concussion during the season while 14.7 of those sustained a second concussion during the same season (athletic trainer-reported concussions). On the other hand, when looking at player reported concussions, 47%of football players reported at least one concussion during the season while 35% of football players reported multiple concussions during that same season, 50 times as many reported by trainers. In response to this problem, the CDC developed a tool kit on concussion in sports to help coaches better understand the problem, prepare for concussion incidents, educate athletes, parents and school staff about concussions, and incorporate prevention steps in every day practice and play. This tool kit can be obtained for free from the CDC here.
Also speaking at the conference was Steven Rice, M.D. , Ph.D. who is currently the program director for the Pediatric Sports Medicine Fellowship at Jersey Shore University Medical Center, Phil Hossler, ATC, an athletic trainer on the high school, university and Olympic level. Mr. Hossler presented an excellent viewpoint from an athletic trainer’s perspective urging those trainers in attendance to appreciate the significant public health problem concussion in sports causes and to encourage their vigilance in preventing and/or recognizing the signs of an athlete’s concussion.
In the afternoon, Ronald C. Savage, Ed.D., an accomplished author, trainer and educator on the effects of brain injury in children and adolescents, talked about the effects the behavioral, emotional and physical effects and changes of concussion when young athletes are injured.
The conference concluded with a presentation by Dr. Jill Brooks, a clinical neuropsychologist who served on the New Jersey Advisory Council on Traumatic Brain Injury and who serves on the Medical Advisory Committee for the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association, who spoke on prevention of concussions in sports.
Maybe the most interesting presentations of the day were the two student athletes whose athletic careers were cut short by concussions. These two athletes gave a personalized and introspective account of how they were injured and the effect that these serious injuries had on their lives.
BIANJ and those many individuals that made this wonderful sports concussion summit possible are to be applauded for their hard work and most importantly this successful conference.