Return to Play Decisions: The hits and the HIT (system).

October 6, 2014 by

It’s October, and I thought I’d share a blog post I previously wrote about return to play decisions (see below). The football teams I cover are smack dab in the middle of their seasons; I, like all my colleagues covering teams this fall, have been busy making plenty of ‘return to play decisions.’

What do you all do with your 7 and 8 year olds? Yes, your 7 and 8 year olds……little did I know when I started my career that I would be making ‘return to play’ decisions for this age group, but that is among my duties here at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. How about you?

With that sort of return to play decision in mind, I could hardly find a more relevant piece of original research than the study on head impact exposure in youth football in the September 2014 CJSM.  The authors–a group from Virginia Tech and Wake Forest–are well known for recently publishing various studies on head  impact exposure using the ‘Head Impact Telemetry’ (HIT) system.   The HIT system is being used more regularly at various levels of football in helping to determine when an athlete may need a sideline evaluation.  As we all know, athletes in the heat of competition are not always the most forthcoming in sharing when they may have had a symptomatic hit; for that matter, the collective body of sideline physicians, athletic trainers and coaches don’t always pick up on the hits that occur right in front of our eyes:  just ask Brady Hoke and the Michigan Wolverines.

Returning to youth sport…..as my friends at MomsTeam have written, “the day when monitoring of head impact exposure in football and other contact and collision sports becomes commonplace is closer at hand than one might think.”  Here’s a list of what’s available right now for players from youth level on up to the pros (again, thanks MomsTeam for the reference).

I can forsee the time when I will integrate head impact exposure data along with what I find with my other concussion assessments to determine when I will release one of my youth athletes back to the field.  Next season, I will likely be involved with coverage of a high school which uses “Shockbox” technology.  However, I don’t currently use such systems; that is to say, none of the teams I cover, high school or university, use the HIT system or any other impact exposure technology.  Are you already using such technology in your determinations? Let me know if you are.  I’d like to learn more.

Enjoy the reblogged post below.

 

sportingjim's avatarClinical Journal of Sport Medicine Blog

535001_10201384038456502_1470889600_n Though a beautiful time of year, fall is not
the most idyllic for a sports medicine clinician

Like many of the readers out there, my colleagues and I are deep in a football season, where we are managing various teams and their mounting injuries.  For a sports medicine physician, fall in America must be a bit like early spring for an accountant (tax day = April 15):  it’s the time to buckle down and crank through patients, the time, from a certain perspective, to see the volume of patients that will sustain the business through leaner times of the year.

When I’m out of the clinic and on the sidelines, I’m also doing one of the parts of my job that is the most fun, and I’m sure my colleagues out in the blog sphere will agree.  But I wouldn’t describe the work as an idyll.  I can be enjoying…

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Filed under General Interest, Technology in Sports Medicine, Youth Sport Tagged with ,

Return-To-Play Concussion Legislation in American States

April 28, 2013 by 3 Comments

I woke up yesterday morning and the sun was shining, the earth still turned………

In the grand scheme of things, the event that occurred on Friday was minor, so all was to be expected with the world at large.  But in my little corner of the world—the world of youth sports medicine in Ohio—things may be changing considerably, and soon.

Friday, April 26 marked the day that Ohio House Bill 143, Ohio’s “Return-To-Play” legislation that addresses how youth sports concussions are managed, went into effect.  And some people predict a flood of sorts is coming.

As many American readers of this blog might know, the legislators of Washington State signed into law the “Zachary Lystedt Law” in 2009.  This law, the first of its type, has become a model for other states to follow.  The legislation came into being in response to an event which occurred in 2006, when a middle-school student-athlete named Zachary Lystedt sustained a severe head injury while playing American Gridiron football.  The injury was found to be due, at least in part, to a concussion the young man had sustained earlier in the same game.  His injuries were catastrophic: Lystedt did not die, but he will be disabled the remainder of his life.

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In 2011, Minnesota Governor signing his state’s concussion bill into law.

The Washington State law contained several provisions addressing issues of education and informed consent, but its centerpiece is a requirement that any athlete playing at any level of youth sport who is suspected of having a concussion cannot return to play without an evaluation by a health care professional and a written, signed statement releasing the individual back to his/her sport.  Over the subsequent four years, 42 states, and the District of Columbia, have established similar laws.

Effective Friday, Ohio has become the 43rd state with such a law in place. Read more of this post

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AMSSM Meeting In San Diego

April 20, 2013 by 5 Comments

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Drs. Julie Wilson, William Meehan and Naomi Brown

I am in the San Diego airport on my way back home to Columbus, Ohio, reflecting on my whirlwind trip to #AMSSM13, the 2013 American Medical Society of Sports Medicine Conference that will wrap up tomorrow.

I spent my 24 hours on the ground connecting with colleagues, attending an Editorial Board Meeting of the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine, and catching some great talks this morning, three of which I’d like to profile in this post.

Dr. Julie Wilson, from Nationwide Children’s Hospital, and Drs. William Meehan and Naomi Brown, from Boston Children’s Hospital, all presented very interesting research on different aspects of concussion. Their research abstracts are among the collected abstracts of the AMSSM Research Presentations that can be found in the March 2013 edition of CJSM.

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Reaction Time Device

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Consensus Statement on Concussion in Sport – the 4th International Conference on Concussion in Sport. Video introduction by Dr Willem Meeuwisse

March 14, 2013 by 2 Comments

Following on from the AMSSM Position Statement on Concussion in Sport published in the last edition of CJSM, this month sees the publication of the latest Consensus Statement on Concussion in Sport from the 4th International Conference on Concussion in Sport held in Zurich in November 2012.

The 4th Statement takes into account the most up-to-date research on the topic of concussion in sport, and is accompanied by the new Sports Concussion Assessment Tool (SCAT3), Child SCAT, and the Concussion Recognition Tool (CRT) for patients and parents. Printable copies of the new tools can be downloaded via the links provided on the CJSM website.

In this video, Concussion in Sport Group Member Dr Willem Meeuwisse, former Editor-in-Chief of the Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine, presents an introduction to the new statement and discusses the main new features therein including the new SCAT3, child SCAT3 and Concussion Recognition tools.

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