New Concussion report

[Which Tyler]

https://blogs.bmj.com/bjsm/2023/04/24/h ... l-athletes

[Which Tyler]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/65565152

World Rugby approves lower tackle height trial in community game

[Gloskarlos]

Opt-in, communities can choose, variation around ball carrier height, dipping, double tackles etc.

It's not very clear or succinct is it. I am hoping before next season starts there is a LOT more clarity.

[Which Tyler]

[Which Tyler]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/65814810

Concussion in sport: Free app set for government-backed trial

[Which Tyler]

https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/57/11/695

[Which Tyler]

WRU follow suit
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/64512476

[Mr Mwenda]

Perhaps not the right place for this, but I found this powerful: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/ ... dApp_Other

[Mellsblue]

[Banquo]

not so anonymous now...

[monkey]

not so anonymous now...

does he not mean responses on the survey are anonymous?

[Banquo]

not so anonymous now...

does he not mean responses on the survey are anonymous?

mebbbe... Twas a jest, admittedly rubbish

[Which Tyler]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-66315003

Wales rugby legend JPR Williams has called on the sport's chiefs to pay more attention to the links between concussion and the impact on players.

The 1970s star and surgeon spoke as researchers found a link between repeat rugby concussions and reduced blood and oxygen flow to the brain in later life.

The study said it may show why memory, thought processes and co-ordination declined in some ex-players tested.

World Rugby has said it welcomes new research into players' welfare.

Williams, a British and Irish Lion renowned for his toughness on the field in the Welsh game's 1970s golden era, said governing bodies must take more notice of research.

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I'm pretty sure this is the study itself: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37423736/
Includes this conclusion "Retired rugby union players with history of multiple concussions may be characterised by impaired molecular, cerebral haemodynamic and cognitive function compared to non-concussed, non-contact controls. "

[Mellsblue]

In possibly the ultimate irony, Dr Barry O’Driscoll has been diagnosed with dementia.

[loudnconfident]

Review of "Concussed: Sport’s Uncomfortable Truth" by Sam Peters in the latest London Review of Books.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n19 ... cored-last

It should be available to non-subscribers as it's on the freebie email. (I'm a subscriber and will post the full review if you can't access it)

"In the late 1980s the average player in the New Zealand rugby union squad weighed around 92 kg. In 1995 rugby union was professionalised, and it became increasingly important that the game was entertaining for TV audiences. The injury rate nearly doubled between 1993 and 1997, and the frequency of tackling also began to climb: in 1987, 94 tackles per match; in 1995, 113; in 2003, 189. This was a new era for rugby, exemplified by spectacular players like New Zealand’s Jonah Lomu, who was 6’5’’ and 119 kg, and could run a hundred metres in 11 seconds. Lomu died in 2015; when I searched his name online, some of the top results were: ‘He was IMPOSSIBLE to stop’; ‘Jonah Lomu Smashing People for 4 Minutes’; ‘Like a Train Smash’. Other national federations took the hint, and players got bigger, faster and stronger. By 2019 South Africa’s national team weighed in at an average of 102 kg, and its forwards – the players in the scrum, who also do most of the tackling – at an average of 118 kg. ‘Rugby is a collision sport and you cannot deny there has been an increase in injuries,’ the former England team doctor Phil Batty says. ‘It used to be that the forwards wouldn’t be quick enough to catch the backs but now, with greater emphasis on fitness training, they are and then you can get serious collisions. That, in very simple terms, is what has happened to club rugby.

The one-time rugby journalist Sam Peters has written for the Scotsman, the Telegraph, the Independent and the Sunday Times. He also worked for many years at the Mail on Sunday, where he started a campaign to change the game’s rules to give players better protection from concussion. Concussed is the story of that campaign, as well as an account of the transformation of professional men’s rugby from a contact sport played by big men into a collision sport played by giants."

[Which Tyler]

It should be available to non-subscribers as it's on the freebie email. (I'm a subscriber and will post the full review if you can't access it)

It's not paywalled - but I'll have to read it later - bit long to fit in between patients.

[Which Tyler]

Review of "Concussed: Sport’s Uncomfortable Truth" by Sam Peters in the latest London Review of Books.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/ ... gbys-shame

[Mellsblue]

https://www.world.rugby/news/891042/ind ... ver-before

[Which Tyler]

https://blogs.bmj.com/bjsm/2023/11/27/i ... oncussion/

Is it scientifically valid, sensible, or safe to use biomarkers to diagnose concussion?

Introduction:
The identification and management of concussion in contact sport remains a critical issue for players, employers, and wider stakeholders. Sports participation should be encouraged, with the well-known myriad of health and social benefits deriving from physical exercise and human interaction through sport. However, there is increasing evidence that repeated blows to the head during contact sports places individuals long-term brain health at risk, [1,2] and has led to a predictable debate over individual risk versus population health.

Follow link above, for the article itself

[morepork]

https://blogs.bmj.com/bjsm/2023/11/27/i ... oncussion/

Is it scientifically valid, sensible, or safe to use biomarkers to diagnose concussion?

Introduction:
The identification and management of concussion in contact sport remains a critical issue for players, employers, and wider stakeholders. Sports participation should be encouraged, with the well-known myriad of health and social benefits deriving from physical exercise and human interaction through sport. However, there is increasing evidence that repeated blows to the head during contact sports places individuals long-term brain health at risk, [1,2] and has led to a predictable debate over individual risk versus population health.

Follow link above, for the article itself

I smell IP! It's not actually an approved biomarker:

© Marker AG All rights reserved; For use in the U.S. under FDA EUA200148: Authorization for Emergency Use in patients with COVID-19 admitted to the ICU with confirmed or imminent respiratory failure; CAUTION: Investigational Device. Limited by Federal (United States) law to investigational use.

Abbott has two FDA-approved mTBI tests out there, one for plasma and one for whole blood.

[Which Tyler]

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/ ... high-court

Rugby players’ brain injury battle reaches watershed moment in court

Legal action brought by 268 players faces a day of reckoning on Friday while the sport continues to wrestle with the repercussions of head trauma

It has been 10 years since I first spoke to Peter Robinson about the death of his young son Ben, almost to the day. Ben had died of brain swelling after being hit in the head twice in short succession during a school rugby game on 29 January 2011. Peter’s grief was raw, but he wanted to talk because he had a story he needed to tell. It was a story about Ben and what happened to him that day, but it was about more than that, too. It was a story about a sport Peter loved, but which he believed was failing to protect its players from the risks of brain injury.

...

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[Puja]

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/ ... eakthrough

I remain very dubious. I'd want to see a *lot* of trials and science done before this was approved by World Rugby - there's a massive profit motive in selling a headguard that "protects against concussion" for £120 a pop and the concern is that it may be a) not particularly effective, and b) may actually make the situation worse by making players more reckless.

Puja

[Which Tyler]

I suspect that's the same one that's been making big claims for a couple of years now, and is yet to show anything about reducing concussion, or concussive impacts - just "reduces direct impact" in vectors that aren't terribly relevant in concussion.

So far, they've been a triumph of marketing over reality.

If it is that same company, I got banned from their facebook page for asking if they had any studies linking the types of impact they were so proud of reducing, with concussion.


ETA: Different company apparently, but facing the same problems - it's padding the wrong side of the skull.

[Which Tyler]

https://archive.is/4NiTb

Resolution in rugby lawsuit still seems years away with ‘gaping hole’ in evidence
Three years since the lawsuit was first launched, “blockages” have prevented the case from moving forward
It is nearly three years to the day that the law firm Rylands Garth announced that it was going to launch a concussion lawsuit on behalf of dozens of former players against rugby’s authorities. Sitting in Court 75 in some far away nook of the Royal Courts of Justice off the Strand on Friday morning and the ancient Chinese proverb of the wheels of justice turning slowly never rang truer.
...
ARTICLE CONTINUES

[morepork]

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/ ... eakthrough

I remain very dubious. I'd want to see a *lot* of trials and science done before this was approved by World Rugby - there's a massive profit motive in selling a headguard that "protects against concussion" for £120 a pop and the concern is that it may be a) not particularly effective, and b) may actually make the situation worse by making players more reckless.

Puja

It will do the square root of fuck all for shear forces acting on the brain when you go rapidly in the opposite direction you were rapidly moving in when you got tackled. It's not simply a case of protecting the eggshell from a direct impact, it's about minimising the back and forth suffered by the yolk in the shell, and that will be addressed by guidelines on tackling and clearing out. Easy said I know, but much more effective than a shiny helmet.

Pffffff...."shiny Helmut"