Posts from ‘Prevention’
The NFL and high school football have come into focus in the traumatic brain injury world lately, as studies pile up demonstrating the serious risk of degenerative brain disease to players who suffer multiple concussions. The Boston Globe reported that the NFL’s own study showed that retired football players from age 30 to 49 had dementia rates 19 times greater than normal, and that retirees 50 and older had 5 times more incidence of memory-related disorders.
The Boston Globe also mentioned a University of North Carolina study saying that players who had suffered multiple concussions had “several times more prevalence of cognitive impairment” than those players who had never suffered brain injuries. The Boston Globe reported that 1.14 million kids play high school football and 3.2 million more play in youth leagues. New studies continue to be released revealing the serious danger inherent to the violent crashes between players in the sport.
Since it seems that football is not going to stop being a hugely popular sport, parents of young athletes are faced with the task of making the sport somehow safer for their young boys, or removing them from the sport altogether. After all, no matter how glorious it may feel to win games and make fantastic plays, living with degenerative brain disorder with a failing memory in a wheelchair is not glorious at all.
One solution some coaches and parents agree on is to not let boys continue playing after a concussion or head injury occurs until the child’s brain has had time to heal. The Globe article reported on a study from the journal Brain Injury that said 16% of student players in high school were returned to play after losing consciousness during a game. They added that most high school games do not have a certified athletic trainer in attendance on the sidelines.
A Harvard epidemiologist said to the Globe that the NFL should use footage of plays when injuries occur to make rule changes to ensure the safety of all players. Scientists at Boston University’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy told the Globe of incidents of degenerative brain disease in 18-year-old football players. They added that the brain continues to mature and develop well into the 20s and that football will have to change to make it safer for the youth.
60 Minutes reported that the impacts between football players, who can run at up to 20 miles per hour, are akin to a car hitting a brick wall at 40 miles per hour. Unfortunately, human heads are much more delicate than car bumpers. As the studies pile up that prove how dangerous football can be to the brains of the players, one must wonder what changes, if any, will be made to the sport to protect its players from serious injury.
Many times, athletes and their coaches and families are unaware that their brains have suffered serious injuries. Since degenerative brain disease eats away at brain cells slowly over time, it is easy to mistake the symptoms for psychological disorders or other issues. It is not until after a person dies and an autopsy is done on their brain that traumatic brain injuries and subsequent degeneration are revealed. Some scientists are working to improve diagnostic tools to better identify serious brain injuries in living patients while successful treatment remains possible.
It seems that football’s popularity will continue to remain high, but with 60 Minutes reporting that “sports related concussions are an epidemic in this country,” one can only hope that parents take the lead in keeping their children’s developing brains safe from traumatic brain injuries, and that NFL players and coaches will take the hint and stop putting players with concussions back in the game.
Each player has to ask himself, “Is it worth losing my brain functions later in life to continue playing now?” If the answer is no, changes to the game and how concussions are dealt with will have to be made.
(pic from flickr.com/photos/aheram)
Medical professionals, high school officials, parents, coaches, and student athletes in communities west of Boston, Massachusetts are working together to bring more awareness to concussions in high school sports such as hockey, football, and cheerleading. According to a Boston Globe article, late last year, the Massachusetts Association of School Committees reported that multiple concussions can lead to catastrophic brain injury and swelling, as well as prolonged post-concussion syndrome.
The group issued recommendations for safety and prevention of concussions, and they propose computerized cognitive testing both before each season begins and after a concussion to monitor the healing process on a more subtle level.
While some schools have implemented a form of computerized testing, other schools use handwritten methods of measuring and tracking student’s cognitive functioning after concussions. Schools and parents have reason to be concerned due to the severe nature of any brain injury, including concussions, which are common enough that they are often not taken seriously.
A spokeswoman for the Brain Injury Association of Massachusetts in Westborough wants to challenge the tradition of cheering on players who join in the game immediately after getting a serious head injury. She believes that current policies on concussions do not do enough to educate and protect students who are at risk of traumatic brain and spinal cord injury in addition to concussion.
High school athletes in Massachusetts are currently required to have their doctor’s or a trainer’s permission before resuming activity in contact sports after having a concussion. Some medical professionals recommend staying out of any sports activity for at least a week after a concussion or head injury.
A spokesman for the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association said that an attentive coach and a well trained medical staff can prove just as effective in preventing serious long-term harm in student concussions. The MIAA and the Brain Injury Association of Massachusetts push for a well rounded plan of action including coaches, medical staff, parents, teachers, fellow students, and lawmakers.
Coaches must be able to react immediately when a head injury occurs in the field. A well trained medical staff must be alerted to take over from there. Finally, fellow students, parents, and teachers must pay attention to students who have had concussions to observe any differences in behavior.
A combination of high tech computerized cognitive testing programs and preventative measures such as safety policy and public education will likely improve the chances of a successful outcome for high school athletes who suffer concussions and brain injuries.
Apple’s App Store, well known for its tight strictures and uptight policies regarding the iPhone applications it chooses to accept, has stepped in it this time.
The Baby Shaker, a $.99 application for the iPhone that requires users to shake their phone in order to quiet crying babies, incited outrage from brain injury organizations and children’s groups, causing it to be removed two days after its release.
“See how long you can endure his or her adorable cries before you just have to find a way to quiet the baby down!” read the iTunes description.
Apple has apologized for the mistake, though they have yet to address how Baby Shaker, created by Sikalosoft, made it into the App Store in the first place.
“This application was deeply offensive and should not have been approved for distribution on the App Store,” Apple said in a statement.
Visit the Sikalosoft web site and you will find a statement acknowledging the app’s poor taste, “Yes, the Baby Shaker iPhone app was a bad idea. You should never shake a baby! Even on an Apple iPhone Baby Shaking application. In case you are unaware Baby Shaker was an Apple iPhone application that was greatly lacking in taste. It was approved by Apple for download upon the iPhone”.
Apple reviews hundreds of apps every day, a number that argues for the occasional error in judgment, and their quick action to remove the game bodes well for their reputation. Yet the choice to approve the game in the first place points out a glaring flaw in their procedures – “bad taste” may have a variety of definitions depending on the audience, but when in doubt, error on the side of caution.
Never, ever shake a baby. And while we realize that a game is just that – a game, the inference that there is something entertaining about the act is enough, in our opinion, to justify the removal of this app.
The National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome lists multiple consequences of shaking a baby, from seizures and permanent brain damage to death. With close to 1,500 U.S. children experiencing severe or fatal head trauma from child abuse every year, we’d rather see applications underlining proper education. Rock your child to sleep, don’t shake it to death.
Over the last couple of years we have been hearing of the push to digitize health records, in hopes of streamlining a patients data for easy access across medical facilities. Yesterday the Mayo clinic announced a partnership with Microsoft’s HealthVault to launch the Mayo Clinic Health Manager, a tool that gives people the ability to store their medical records online as well as sign up for alerts and reminders. This is only the latest in a procession of new online storage services being offered to interested patients.
Using these services you can import your health records from your doctors, hospitals, labs, prescription drug plans, and other healthcare providers by typing them in yourself or uploading data directly from devices such as blood-pressure monitors. Now with just a couple clicks of your mouse, you can view your entire medical history – what medications you have taken, which ones you are currently on, adverse reactions, operations, diagnosis, and even childhood diseases. What’s online is up to you and, if he is a participant in the government supported push for electronic records, your doctor.
We aren’t going to advocate for or against the digitizing of your healthcare history, but we do want to make sure you are taking into consideration the potential dangers of such a move. While the convenience of hopping online to find out what date you started a particular medication may make the process of filling out your insurance claim easier, keep in mind that what’s easy access for you is just as easy for someone else. Yes, we are talking about hackers. Those information pirates that keep developing more and more insidious data-mining processes.
What does it matter if some stranger is copying your medical information? What can it hurt besides your feelings of privacy? A lot, actually.It isn’t just insurance claims that are affected by your medical history, your reputation is also potentially at risk.
M. Eric Johnson, director of the Glassmeyer/McNamee Center for Digital Strategies at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, released a paper in which he said he and his fellow researchers “were able to uncover a number of medical records and other files with medical information online, using file-sharing services generally associated with song-swapping, like LimeWire and Kazaa”. He went on to note that many of our records are already in electronic form on computers in small clinics and laboratories whose security can’t begin to match that offered by the larger data storage facilities.
Johnson cites numerous instances of leaked records leading to identity theft, medical insurance fraud, and even financial fraud. Don’t forget, your social security number is more often than not is included in your medical records, and adding that information to identifying data such as your date of birth, address, and full name give thieves everything they need to make a profit from your information.
When you are considering making your records electronic, make sure you choose a company that has multiple safeguards in place. While there are always ways around even the toughest Internet security, the likelihood of keeping your information private greatly increases depending what program provider you go with. Google Health has partnered with Medco, as Microsoft’s HealthVault has teamed up with the Mayo Clinic, giving the resulting storage systems more clout than lesser known companies such as iHealthRecord or myPHR, but before you make a choice, research them well – your private data is on the line!
Image from here.
The tragic death of Natasha Richardson has brought the need for traumatic brain injury (TBI) awareness into stark relief. As with many things in life, we tend to look around, look over, and look through dangers that haven’t directly touched our lives. Like the child whistling in the dark, we skim over the short news piece that notes another life irrevocably changed by a brain injury and we think “that could never happen to me”.
This perspective shifts when when the injured person suddenly become someone we are familiar with, who we can in some way identify with. In an article by Bryan Brown, Carlin Flora who is a senior editor for Psychology Today, said that we can develop this identification with someone we have no personal knowledge of because “we see their faces over and over” in the media. “Our brains are tricked into thinking we know these people.”
A study by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign explain it this way: celebrity identification allows us to feel a connection with some of the ideals they embody and that we consider our own, or as Matthew Hutson, news editor for Psychology Today puts it, “When they die, their memory lives on, and, by proxy, so does yours.”
When Richardson’s death was splashed across the media the people who had felt this connection to the actress, no matter how slight, were suddenly made aware of just how real this type of injury was. Articles were written about the dangers of TBIs, bloggers relayed the details in post after post, and readers found themselves wondering how to keep this from happening to themselves and their loved ones. But, as with even the most incredibly painful experiences, time has started to dim this tragedy. People go on with their lives, they push the uncomfortable emotions down and after a while, they start to forget.
What needs to be realized from this is that while yes, people will and DO forget, the cause of Richardson’s untimely death made an impact and it will, often in subtle ways, affect the lives, choices, and actions of many – hopefully for the better.
How do you know if your child has suffered a mild or severe concussion? Interestingly enough, there is little data to determine not only how bad the concussion is, but when the patient has fully recovered.
Anyone who experiences a traumatic brain or spinal cord injury is aware of how significantly his or her life can change within a matter of seconds. The two populations most at risk to sustain brain or spinal cord injuries are drivers and athletes. By being aware of certain information, both these groups can minimize their risk for brain and spinal cord injuries…
he importance of the vehicle seat’s role in automobile accidents shouldn’t be overlooked, yet it often is. If you run an Internet search, you will find numerous stories on collapsed seat backs, faulty restraint systems and inadequate load bearing ability – all manufacturer-related issues that have contributed to injury or death in automobile crashes.
One area of concern that is overlooked more than most is that of wheelchairs used in lieu of standard seats in vehicles…
