Concussions in Sports: How Safe are Athletes?

Joe Tantillo, JRN-100 News Reporter

Adam Cleary was a lacrosse player who experienced a concussion during his time playing. Cleary thought he would only be sidelined for a few days, but it turned into a few weeks. He was not just sidelined on the field; he was sidelined in the classroom as well.

“I was forced to sit in dark rooms for two weeks with glasses on and for over a month I had migraines. It took a month to fully regain the ability to put a helmet on and not feel and pain from the light or other things within the game of lacrosse,” Cleary said.

Lacrosse is a high contact sport where concussions are commonplace. Concussions have been the fear of parents whose kids play high contact sports. They can seriously affect a person’s life, especially younger people with developing brains. A build up of concussions can lead to problems later in life, an issue that is becoming more and ore mainstream due to tragedies in the world of sports like football and boxing,

CTE is relatively new to the mainstream world, but their impact on the lives of athletes has led them to be at the forefront of the new charge for player safety, especially for college and high school athletes. The push for new safety measures to protect athletes from head injuries comes in wake of CTE. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a neurodegenerative disease most found in athletes and is caused by repeated concussive blows to the head. Research is being done to figure out why CTE is happening and what can be done to stop it.

“A consensus panel’s recent identification of a pathognomonic pathology in CTE… is an important step in developing consensus diagnostic criteria and clinicopathological studies,” a study published by the Journal of Vascular and Interventional Neurology said.

This was a study done in 2016 by a panel of neurological scientists that helped find a consensus way to find CTE. This is a huge step forward in figuring out more about the disease. This is big news because it gives us a way to differentiate CTE from other neurological diseases. Before now, we could not differentiate between CTE and other neurological diseases. When looking at the brain we can see specifically the irregular distribution above and that can help doctors and scientists find CTE instead of different neurological diseases. This is a huge breakthrough as it could allow us to find CTE in humans before they die.  As of now, CTE is only discoverable in the brain after death. With the progress that this study made, neurologists could figure out a way to identify CTE before death, which would bring huge progress to the field.

“It is estimated that between 1.6 and 3.8 million sports-related mTBIs occur annually, and sport-related head injuries make up 20% of TBI cases in the United States each year [10,11]. This may be an underestimate, as mTBI frequently goes unreported at multiple levels in a variety of sports [12–16]. As the number of athletes at the high school, collegiate, and professional levels continues to increase, related concussive injuries may rise proportionally,” a study published by the Journal of Vascular and Interventional Neurology said.

An mTBI is a traumatic brain injury, a hit to that head that causes injury. In contact sports, mTBIs are commonplace. The constant contact that sports like football and boxing have led to athletes suffering from multiple mTBIs. We have seen athletes in both worlds die because of CTE, and these publicized deaths are what have led to a safety campaign in these sports. There is always an inherent risk of a concussion in these sports, but safety advocates want to do as much as possible to stop concussions from happening.

Even though research has made giant strides, there is still research being done to find new information about CTE along with hoping to find a way to find CTE in humans before they die. As a researcher at the Boston University CTE Center, Madeline Uretsky is working every day to help find out more about CTE.

“We at BU, along with other research institutions such as UCSF(University of California San Francisco), have made a variety of discoveries in the last few years that have helped to move us closer to diagnosing CTE during life. We’ve also learned that certain risk factors, such as age one starts playing a contact sport, and duration of play, are critically important for understanding the dose-response relationship of head trauma and pathology. The longer someone plays football, the odds of developing CTE increase,” Uretsky said.

There is inherent risk in contact sports like boxing and football and playing them increases your chances of developing CTE. Uretsky and the team at BU are trying hard to find a way to diagnose CTE in people before they die, something that is currently impossible.

“Like any neurodegenerative disease, it’s important to differentiate amongst others so that you can develop treatment and intervention targets. For example, doctors can diagnose Alzheimer’s disease in life fairly confidently with a variety of tests taken together including neuropsychological testing, amyloid PET scans, and cerebrospinal fluid protein levels. We’re currently researching similar biomarkers for CTE, and in comparison to Alzheimer’s disease, so we can differentiate between them and accurately diagnose CTE,” Uretsky said

This is a huge step for high school and college athletes along with professional athletes because it could help them see how much damage has actually been done to their brain. As far as preventing concussions, Uretsky said there was not much that could be done.

“The only way to prevent CTE is to not get hit in the head. You don’t get it if you don’t get hit in the head hundreds to thousands of times over your life, so decreasing head impacts is important. I believe they have limited tackling in practices at various levels of football play, and have included unaffiliated neurological consultants for NFL teams. But there is always more than can be done,” Uretsky said.

Concussions can seriously affect how athletes can function for weeks and sometimes months. Sports are trying to figure out ways to make these contact sports safer, starting with helmets. The NFL has banned certain helmets that cause concussion easily and have spent millions of dollars creating helmets that lead to less concussions. Youth sports leagues are also making it so kids do not start playing full contact sports until they are older to stop concussions from happening early.

Leagues are trying their hardest to make sure that players are as safe as possible while playing, but it is impossible to take concussions out of sports entirely. Concussions are being taken more seriously and players are being safer than they once were, but parents and athletes are still worried about concussions and their affects. Players are being as safe as possible with the information that we currently have, and as we learn more about concussions and CTE these sports will continue to get safer.

Lacrosse player Cleary said that him along with other athletes and coaches are starting to realize that concussions are a serious issue in sports. He realized how they could affect his future and other athletes are starting to realize that as well

“Now when I take a big hit my first instinct is not to try to get back on the field as quickly as possible. I want to make sure that I don’t have a concussion before I get back on the field and play. I want to make sure I can live a long and healthy life.”