Concussion Awareness Remains at Top of Minds

As high school football starts another season, one likely trend is the continued focus on concussion awareness. No longer being dismissed nonchalantly, traumatic brain injuries and how to treat them are the focus of studies at all levels of athletics right now, and they were the topic of a recent forum at Skokie's Village Hall.

A sea change has occurred in sports over the past few years as the high-profile cases such as those of former NFL players Dave Duerson and Jim McMahon and NHL player Sidney Crosby have shifted attitudes toward concussions. The NFL and other sports are far more cautious with athletes who sustain concussions, and that attitude has filtered down to the high school level.

Pete Matalas, an assistant football coach at Niles North High School, said players were now held out of practice for five days if they suffered a concussion.

“Niles North has done a really good job of reforming concussion testing and the symptoms of concussions,” he said.

As the Vikings got ready for the 2011 season, Matalas said the issue came up during a practice.

“We’ve had a few situations where kids have been taken out because of complaints of dizziness and headaches,” he said. “We’re erring on the side of caution for the sake of our athletes.”

The issue was discussed Aug. 22, when Dr. Benjamin Hasan, director of sports medicine at NorthShore University HealthSystem, went over with a group of coaches and school nurses what to look for in terms of a concussion and how to treat the injury.

Hasan, who also serves as the team physician for Niles West High School, said the key symptoms include a headache, confusion, nausea, a ringing in the ears, sensitivity to light and sound, vomiting and an inability to concentrate. He emphasized that school officials and parents needed to be cognizant of these problems and get the player to a doctor immediately.

“We hope that coaches, Park District personnel and parents know the signs of a concussion,” Hasan said.

Dr. Dawn Comstock, a researcher for the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, OH, provided some statistics on concussions regarding high school athletics.

In the nine sports that Comstock’s group surveyed since the 2005-2006 season, concussions represented 9 percent of all injuries reported. Now that figure was more than twice as high five years later--20 percent in the 2010-11 school year.

Not surprisingly, the sport with the highest rate of concussions is football.

During the 2005-06 survey period, the rate was 15.5 concussions for each 10,000 competition exposures. That number had more than doubled five years later, when the report found it had jumped to 33.7 concussions for each 10,000 competition exposures.

In other words, for every 10,000 youngsters playing weekend football, 33.7 of them were going to sustain a concussion.

The increase may sound bad, but Comstock sees it as progress in raising awareness.

“I think in this case, increasing numbers may not be a bad thing,” the physician said. “The reason for this is there has been quite a bit of education over the past few years in schools and for coaches and student athletes.

"I believe these increasing numbers reflect a better awareness of concussions. I don’t think the number of concussions have increased dramatically [over] the past few years. I think student athletes who had not been diagnosed in previous years are now being diagnosed,” he added.

Progress has been made nationwide in regards to diagnoses. According to Comstock, 7.8 percent of the children who sustained concussions returned to play the same day in the 2007-08 season, but had dropped to less than 1 percent in 2010-11.

“I think the athletes in the suburbs are getting passed the idea if they don’t say anything they will still be able to play,” Hasan said.

For all the attention being paid to brain injuries nowadays, some may be going too far, according to Hasan. “The devastating cases are not that common,” he said. “Some of this can get to the point of paranoia.”

Dr. Catherine Counard, Skokie’s Health Department director, was pleased many people took time to hear what Hasan and Comstock had to say.

“I was happy to see a diverse group of people from kindergarten through high school,” she said. “I feel very strongly this is a very important public health issue.

"We’re doing everything we can to get this information into the hands of the people who are there such as a coach or school nurse,” Counard added.