The New Issue of CJSM

September 8, 2013 by 4 Comments

friday night lights

Under the lights, on the gridiron:
the site of a lot of concussions.

I was very excited to find the eTOC (electronic table of contents) for the September 2013 CJSM in my email inbox this morning.

As an associate editor, I am privy to this sort of information prior to launch, so to speak, but it’s usually all I can do on these blog pages not to talk about the contents prior to publication.  The offerings are always so varied, so interesting.  Well, the ‘horse is out of the barn now,’ the new CJSM is travelling over the ether, and I can at last discuss an article or two!

Before I forget, let me remind you that you, too, can get the CJSM eTOC and find out the lineup when it’s hot off the press, so I encourage you to go to the home page and sign up, the link is near the top of the masthead.

I wanted to write briefly this morning about one of the new studies in the September CJSM, “The Prevalence of Undiagnosed Concussions in Athletes,” Meehan et al.

William P. Meehan III, M.D. is a friend of mine.  To paraphrase a line that has had a lot of currency recently here in the states, the arc of Bill’s career bends towards success.  It is really hard to keep track of all the work he is doing in the field of concussion.  In fact, in an attempt to do so, I have asked him to participate in a “Five Questions with CJSM” blog post interview, like the one I did with Dr. Jason Mihalik last month.   Keep your eyes posted here, because I’m hoping Bill can sit for a few minutes between attending to his multiple, other commitments and I’ll write up his thoughts in a blog post  before the end of the month, I hope.

The new study was conducted at Boston Children’s Hospital and the University of Pittsburgh.   Read more of this post

Filed under General Interest

Anyone for Tennis? U.S. Open Tennis Championships in Full Swing

September 4, 2013 by

From the archives: with the U.S. Open in full swing, our Excecutive Editor Chris Hughes gives a thorough review on evidence-based treatments for lateral epicondylitis/’tennis elbow’ from the 2011 CJSM blog.

Chris Hughes's avatarClinical Journal of Sport Medicine Blog

And so to the gloriously British Grand Slam Premier Tennis event that is Wimbledon which is currently in full swing. Well – full swing insomuch as the British weather is currently allowing, but at least with the Centre Court’s retractable roof, installed in time for the 2009 Championships, we are guaranteed to get through at least some of the scheduled games every day. As I write in London not more than a few miles away from the courts, the rain is currently pouring down – a not so welcome tradition of the Championships, together with the more desirable traditions such as strawberries and cream, ‘Henman Hill,’ and the inevitable tireless British banter about why we haven’t managed to produce a Men’s Champion since the legendary Fred Perry way back in 1936 when he won for a third time.

A total of 128 players take part over the fortnight in the single tournaments…

View original post 529 more words

Filed under General Interest

Sudden Death on the Playing Field

September 2, 2013 by

It’s Labor Day, and I’m laboring mightily on a research manuscript I’m hoping to get mostly wrapped up this week so I can submit it for publication consideration in a week or so.

I hope you all are enjoying the holiday if you’re in the USA, or having a decent day at work if you are elsewhere.

I hope also you had a chance to see my recent blog post highlighting a recent study looking at the epidemiology of catastrophic injuries in American high school and college football players.

Keeping this ‘low key’ on a holiday, I would encourage you to take the poll below, and check the blog post and the study to see if you got the answer right!

And before I sign off, just a heads up:  the new Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine launches at the end of the week, so look forward to upcoming posts highlighting the great studies we have for you in this edition of CJSM.

Enjoy your BBQ!

Filed under General Interest

And We’re Off……

August 30, 2013 by 1 Comment

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The author and colleague attending
to downed football player

The college football season began here in the USA last night, and the high school football season begins here in Ohio tonight.  I’ll be on the sidelines tonight and every week for the next 10 weeks….or more, if the team I cover makes the playoffs. Ohio Dominican University, the college whose sports our group covers, has been picked to do well this year, and I think the Panthers will, if they stay injury-free.    I hope all the players we’re involved with, high school and college, can stay as safe as can be expected.

The American football season represents the busiest time of our year. This stands to reason, of course, as both injury and participation rates in the sport consistently ‘top the charts’ in almost any study looking into the matter.  My friend and colleague R. Dawn Comstock, Ph.D., whom I mention frequently in these blog posts because of the many articles she has published, authored one such study in the Journal of Athletic Training, 2008:  ‘An Epidemiologic Comparison of High School Sports Injuries Sustained in Practice and Competition.’  Of all the sports studied, football had the highest competition and practice injury rates: 12.09 and 2.54 per 1000 athlete-exposures, respectively.  And as for participation, over 1 million high schoolers and nearly 80,000 college  students play football each year.   Combine these high participation rates and injury rates, and you have lots of bodies to attend to in the fall here in America.

It can be a brutal sport.  Boden et al. published a fine study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine this spring, “Fatalities in High School and College Football Players,” where he and his colleagues looked at the epidemiologic data from the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research from 1990 to 2010.  They found that football is associated with the highest number of fatalities for any sport reported to the Center, with 243 fatalities reported during the study period.  The reported rates of fatality were 1.0 per 100,000 participants.  They found, too, that college football was riskier, with 2.5 deaths per 100,000 participants for collegiate athletes, as compared with 0.9 deaths per 100,000 in high schoolers.

The theme for August here at the CJSM blog and at the mother journal herself has been “Concussion.”  The blog posts for this month have all focused on this issue, and the journal has made freely available this month a set of ten high quality concussion research articles it has published recently in a special concussion “collection.”  And so I would be remiss, with two days left in this month, if I did not briefly mention concussion injury rates in the sport of football.  Again, I will turn to the exceedingly productive Dr. Comstock, who reported in 2007 on “Concussions Among United States High School and Collegiate Athletes.”  Once again, the sport of football tops the injury rate charts, with Comstock’s group reporting rates for high school football players of  1.55 per 1000 athlete exposures; for the collegiate players the rates, as they are for fatalities, are higher, with 3.02 concussions per 1000 athlete exposures.

Time to start reviewing the Zurich consensus statement on Concussion in Sport.

With August’s end, we won’t stop talking about concussion, of course.  It is one of the most newsworthy items in the current field of clinical sports medicine, and I can tell you (having had a sneak peek at the upcoming September edition), that there are some excellent original research articles on the subject being published in CJSM in the next week.  I also have a “Question and Answer” blog post with the illustrious William Meehan, M.D., Director of the Sports Concussion Clinic at Boston Children’s Hospital, coming for the blog in September.  So keep your eyes on these pages, the journal’s website, and follow us on Twitter @cjsmonline (join the 2000+ who already do).  We’ll keep you up-to-date on the news and research relevant to you in your clinical practice of sports medicine.

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Friday Night Lights,
may you and yours be safe this season.

I sign off knowing that many of the readers of this blog will be on sidelines and in training rooms this fall, and I wish you all good luck.  All the fall sports, and especially football, will keep you busy I know.  May you, and the athletes you care for, enjoy health–or recover quickly from injury–under the lights this fall.

Filed under Concussion in Sport, Epidemiology, General Interest Tagged with

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