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Keep Our Families Safe: Consumer News For Families
Newspaper Columns

Gearing up for Sports Safety

[Column 350, August 15, 2005] | Archived Columns

By Ken Suggs*

Before students head back to class this fall, many will spend long hours on football fields in pre-season practice. Even with great coaching, playing by the rules, and using protective equipment, football players are prone to injury—especially brain injuries.

According to the Brain Injury Association of America, football-related brain injuries occur at a rate of one in every 3.5 games and account for 65-85 percent of all football fatalities. In any season, 10 percent of all college players and 20 percent of all high school players suffer brain injuries. Players with brain injuries are six times more likely to sustain new brain injuries.

A concussion is the most common type of traumatic brain injury, and brain injuries are the most serious sport-related injury. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that there are 300,000 sports-related concussions in the United States every year. A concussion is caused by a forceful impact or sudden change in momentum to the head. As a result, the blood vessels in the brain and nerves inside the skull can be damaged. Contrary to common belief, a concussion can occur even if a person never loses consciousness.

With these facts in mind—along with high-profile news stories of young players' deaths and litigation that has revealed defective football equipment—manufacturers have tried to produce new helmets and technologies that will make the game safer.

The first football helmets were made of leather and worn in a 1893 Army-Navy game. College players were required to wear helmets in 1939, and National Football League (NFL) players in 1943.

Helmet technology has evolved significantly since the days of leather. Major football helmet manufacturers Schutt Sports and Riddell have products featuring new materials and construction. Schutt's DNA helmet was designed using information from an NFL-sponsored study that provided data about mild traumatic brain injuries. The DNA helmet is made with a cushioning system called Skydex, which was originally developed for military helmets and boats. The DNA helmet has an extended jaw area to protect against side impacts and internal air bladders that can be inflated to fit each individual player.

At Riddell, the latest helmet offering is the Revolution. The helmet design is based on the results of a study that showed, of all the hits to the head that produced concussions, nearly 70 percent were to the side, face, or jaw area. It was previously believed that blows to the top and front of the head caused concussions.

The Revolution's design offers increased protection to the side of the head and jaw and an air-cushioning system that can be inflated to custom fit each player's head. The new faceguard system is meant to reduce jarring to the player from low-level faceguard impact.

There is no helmet yet available that can completely eradicate concussions. And, because children's brains are still developing, it is important to their full recovery and future health to keep them sidelined longer than adult players.

In the summary of the 2nd International Conference on Concussion in Sport, printed (Jan. 2005) in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, was the recommendation, "...[C]hildren should not be allowed to return to play or training until clinically completely symptom free." The National Youth Sports Safety Foundation recommends that children under six never play football.

Bruce Stern, a New Jersey lawyer who specializes in brain injury cases says, "Keeping kids off the field longer after injury is crucial. But it's tough, when kids don't tell coaches how they feel and when parents want to see their kids stay in the game."

To help monitor athletes and determine when they can resume play, devices have been developed to create "baseline" analyses of players' cognitive function. Schutt Sports and Australia-based CogState last year offered for free to all high schools and colleges in the U.S a product called Concussion Sentinel.

The Sentinel is a computer-based test that measures a player's reaction time and ability to concentrate. The students take the test before the practice season starts to created a baseline result. If a player is injured during the season, he can retake the test during the recovery phase to determine if it is safe to be put back in future games.

A product that uses "real-time" technology is the Head Impact Telemetry System (HITS), created by Simbex, a New Hampshire-based biomechanical product development company. HITS uses sensors within the padding of the helmet to record all blows to the head, for all players simultaneously. The collected data on each blow is sent to a monitoring system. If a hit (or series of hits) reaches a certain threshold, a signal is sent to a sideline coach so that the player can be physically examined. Simbex is working with Riddell to integrate HITS into Riddell helmets.

To find out more about sports-related concussion, including the symptoms and long-term effects, contact the Brain Injury Association at www.biausa.org or the American Academy of Neurology at www.aan.com.

For injury prevention guidelines from the National Athletic Trainers' Association, go to: http://www.nata.org/publications/brochures/minimizingtherisks.htm

*Ken Suggs, president of the American Association for Justice, is a partner in the Columbia, SC, law firm of Janet, Jenner & Suggs.