Athletic trainers step up concussion treatment
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Athletic trainers working with Metro Nashville Public Schools are using a computerized screening system to detect when athletes have a concussion and when it is safe to let them return to play.
Vanderbilt Sports Medicine partners with MNPS to provide a professional athletic trainer to all high school football teams.
They did a pre-screening for all high school football players before they started to season, to help the trainers more successfully screen players during the season if they suspect the player has a concussion.
“If we think they have a concussion, we pull them out of play. They cannot return,” McGavock Comprehensive High School’s Athletic Trainer Niki Harvey said. “It used to be if we think they had a little headache, they could go back in 20 minutes.”
Recent news of lasting effects from multiple concussions has caused athletic governing bodies and others to change their policies on detecting concussions and the required treatment.
Last year, the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association changed its policy.
The organization now requires in athlete who may have a concussion to see a doctor and have the doctor’s approval before returning to play.
Any athlete who shows the signs, symptoms or behaviors consistent with a concussion must be removed from the game immediately.
According to the CDC, signs of a concussion include difficulty thinking clearly, headache, fuzzy or burry vision, and nausea, among others.
“It’s a very serious thing. A lot of people think if you are not unconscious on the field, that means you don’t have a concussion,” Harvey said, “but, that’s not true.”
Ex-NFL players have complained about the long lasting effects of concussions they sustained while playing.
They include serious difficulty remembering things and other problems related to repeat brain injuries.
Last month, 75 former players sued the NFL claiming the organization knew as far back as the 1920s the harmful effects of concussions on players’ brains, but did not tell them the effects until June 2010.
Former NFL player Jerome “The Bus” Bettis is working with Dick’s Sporting Goods to raise money to provide schools nationwide with the same concussion detection system Vanderbilt Sports Medicine used to test MNPS athletes.
The campaign is called Protecting Athletes through Concussion Education or PACE.
The program would provide up to 3,335 schools with the ImPact (Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing) program– a computerized concussion evaluation system.
“I guess people do not realize what can happen down the road, loss of memory and loss of function that can happen,” Harvey said. “We do not want a kid to come play football at 18 or 19 years old then have those problems when he is 50 or 60 years old.”
For the 2011-2012 school year, Vanderbilt Sports Medicine screened all high school football players with the program.
Next year, the clinic plans to expand the screenings to every athlete who plays a contact sport.