‘Concussion-like’ is a make-believe term that fudges the condition: neurologists
When it comes to a concussion, you either have one or you don’t.
So when sports team officials announce that a player is suffering from “concussion-like symptoms,” they’re actually fudging the facts of an injury, two of Canada’s top neurosurgeons suggest.
“There is no (clinical) term ‘concussion-like.’ You either have one or you don’t,” Dr. Charles Tator, a Toronto Western Hospital neurologist says of the phrase.
“It’s a make-believe term that I think teams cook up to avoid the issue that a player has had a concussion.”
Tator, a leading advocate for head protection in sports, points to the case of Maple Leafs goalie James Reimer, who was out of the lineup for six weeks this season with what the team claimed was something only akin to concussion.
“And if you look at those films when he got hit, it was a terrible hit . . . to the head and they called it ‘concussion-like’,” Tator says.
“They didn’t own up to the fact that he had a concussion.”
The same terminology was used again this week to describe Pittsburgh superstar Sidney Crosby’s condition, when the Penguin said he wasn’t sure when he would return after coming back from a major concussion.
Tator says there are currently no medical scans or blood tests that can give a conclusive physiological diagnosis of concussion.
But, he says, there are several standardized lists of symptoms that allow physicians to determine if such an injury has been suffered.
One of the most important of these is the so called Sports Assessment Concussion Tool, or SCAT 2, which lists some 22 symptoms that are consistent with the syndrome’s presence.
These include effects like headache, dizziness, nausea or frank unconsciousness, Tator says that occur in the immediate wake of an injury.
Longer-term symptoms include such things as light sensitivity, ringing in the ear, emotional changes or memory loss.
“And we say one or more of those symptoms make the diagnosis of concussion,” Tator says.
While trainers, parents and coaches should be familiar with these signs, such oral examinations require both a competent physician and a compliant patient to come to a clinical conclusion of concussion.
“The actual diagnosis is made by an actual health care professional like a medical doctor,” Tator says.
“You also need an (honest) patient. You need those two to dance here.”
Players who “fudge it” during a concussion examination make it “hopeless” to come to an accurate diagnosis, Tator says.
Dr. Michael Cusimano, a neurosurgeon at St. Michael’s Hospital, agrees that “concussion-like symptoms” point to a simple conclusion.
“I think they do have a clinical meaning, they mean you’ve had a concussion,” Cusimano says. “These (terms) are euphemisms they are using. That’s what it sure sounds like to me.”
Cusimano is part of an international research race to discover blood markers that would provide a clearer diagnosis of concussion, in the same vein as the enzymes that are currently used to show that a heart attack has occurred.
Record news services