IOC Concussion Conference Amsterdam 2022

The podium at CISG meeting in Amsterdam — Dr. Jacklyn Caccese of Ohio State University presenting

What is the definition of a concussion?

If you are wondering whether this is a rhetorical question, would it confuse you still more to know this is how the IOC Concussion in Sport Group (CISG) Consensus Conference in Concussion began in Amsterdam?

Would it concern you that this is still an open question for one of the more vexing problems we deal with in sports medicine? Even among the panel of world experts gathered to bring together the most recent update of consensus statement for concussion in sport?

I think the answer is — yes. Yes to the confusion, yes to the concern.

I had never been to an IOC CISG meeting. As many of the journal’s readers will know, there have heretofore been several meetings with a consensus statement as their output: 2001 Vienna was the first, 2016 Berlin was the most recent.

CISG was set for a meeting to take place in Paris in the autumn of 2020, but we all know what occurred in that year’s spring.  And so the 6th meeting was rescheduled for 2022 and for a new venue: Amsterdam.

I have just returned home from Amsterdam and wanted to collect my thoughts to give you the reader a brief rundown.

These meetings have become huge, and I am not merely referring to the number of participants (hundreds).  The worldwide press recognizes the importance of the CISG and its influence on global sports.  Over the past year the press has been following closely the story of the previous leader, and now discredited academician, Paul McCrory. And……..immediately prior to the gathering in Amsterdam, the news broke that America’s NIH formally acknowledges the causal link between concussion and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). 

That’s a lot. Read more of this post