A HAPPY and prosperous sporting new year to everyone.
Over the weekend I saw the movie Concussion starring Will Smith, who plays Dr. Bennet Omalu, a Nigerian-born American forensic pathologist who fought efforts by the National Football League (NFL) to stymie his research into brain damage suffered by former professional (American) football players.
The movie is based on the 2009 GQ magazine exposé, Game Brain by Jeanne Marie Laskas.
First of all, what is a concussion? According webmd.com, “A concussion is a type of traumatic brain injury that is caused by a blow to the head or body, a fall, or another injury that jars or shakes the brain inside the skull. Although there may be cuts or bruises on the head or face, there may be no other visible signs of a brain injury.”
As seen in countless Saturday morning cartoons, a concussion is most often caused by a sudden direct blow or bump to the head.
The brain is made of soft tissue. It’s cushioned by spinal fluid and encased in the protective shell of the skull. When you sustain a concussion, the impact can jolt your brain. Traumatic brain injuries can cause bruising, damage to the blood vessels and injury to the nerves.
“The result? Your brain doesn’t function normally. If you’ve suffered a concussion, vision may be disturbed, you may lose equilibrium, or you may fall unconscious. In short, the brain is confused. That’s why Bugs Bunny often saw stars,” according to webmd.com
The most common and least serious type of traumatic brain injury is called a concussion. The word comes from the Latin concutere, which means “to shake violently.”
According to the Center for Disease Control web site, “between 2001 and 2009, an estimated 173,285 people under age 19 were treated in hospital emergency rooms for concussions related to sports and recreation activities. Other causes include car and bicycle accidents, work-related injuries, falls and fighting.”
A concussion is the most common but least serious type of brain injury. It can get serious, though, if anyone suffers three or more of it and leaves it untreated.
Concussion focused on a progressive degenerative disease that Omalu found common in retired NFL players called Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), which is a result of repeated brain trauma or hits to the head. In the movie, the brains of the deceased retired football players were healthy but their brain tissue say otherwise.
CTE caused by brain damage is prevalent in contact sports like mixed martial arts, American football, soccer, ice hockey, basketball, boxing and professional wrestling.
Professional sports leagues, like the National Basketball Association, NFL, National Hockey League, Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer have concussion protocols created in the spirit of voluntary cooperation among team doctors, trainers and players.
The UFC has also adopted a concussion protocol—if a fighter suffers a concussion then he or she will not be allowed to train or fight for 90 days, which ensures proper healing. If a fighter suffers a brutal violent knockout, then the fighter is immediately brought to the nearest medical facility for tests and treatment.
The Washington Post web site quotes UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta, “I think part of the difference here is that in the UFC there is no urgency to play. If you happen to fight and compete and let’s say the doctor says, ‘Okay, you have a concussion,’ you are automatically suspended for 90 days. No contact in the gym. Obviously you can’t compete, you can’t fight,” Fertitta said, adding that the enforced three-month vacation gives UFC fighters “enough time to heal the right way.”
Unfortunately there may be a different set of protocols for competitive team sports and competitive singular sports because in team sports, for example, if you don’t have your best player for 90 days then part of your season is wiped out, so team doctors and trainers may have to rush a player’s treatment so that he makes it in time for the postseason. Hopefully this is fiction and not fact.