In October, NHL legend Ken Dryden spoke to the CBC’s Anna Maria Tremonti about the impact of concussions on athletes. His statements echoed concerns and opinions held by most Ontario brain injury lawyers.
“Concussions affect a life,” he said. “They don’t just affect the ability to play a sport.”
Dryden has become an important anti-concussion voice in his post-hockey and post-political career. He recently published a book on ex-NHLer Steve Montador whose death at 35 was linked to a concussion-related neurodegenerative disease, and has called for significant concussion-reducing changes to the rules of hockey.
Dryden isn’t the only voice pushing for rule changes, including improved return-to-play protocols. Researchers at Western University’s Schulich School of Medicine, for example, recently published a study that revealed ongoing changes to the brains of concussed youth hockey players months after the injury occurred.
The Western team compared images of concussed brains taken 24 to 72 hours after the injury with scans taken three months later. The comparison showed ongoing damage to the brain’s wiring that could affect vision, balance, and thought process in the 11- to 14-year-old test subjects.
“We don’t yet know if this is a healthy coping mechanism in the brain, or if there will be detrimental effects later in life,” medical biophysics PhD candidate Kathryn Manning told CTV News. “This could be alarming if the brain is no longer able to compensate for this underlying damage.”
The study suggested that young athletes are returning to play too soon, leaving them susceptible to ‘second impact syndrome.’ The authors, and many Ontario brain injury lawyers, believe changes to return-to-play rules may be necessary.
Unrelated research led by Michael Cusimano, a neurosurgeon at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, reviewed almost 30 studies involving more than 240,000 baseball and softball players with brain injuries. While head injuries are less common in these sports, the study found that a strong correlation between helmet use and injury severity. While just 14 per cent of the observed injuries were considered ‘severe,’ the vast majority of severely injured victims (upwards of 93 per cent) admitted to not wearing a helmet. Better-enforced league regulations and more effective awareness and education programs could go a long way in reducing the prevalence of concussions or other brain injuries in recreational athletes, the research suggests.
If you or a member of your family suffers a brain injury while playing a sport, you may be entitled to compensation. Contact Neinstein Personal Injury Lawyers’ team of experienced Ontario brain injury lawyers to find out how we can help.
Image credit: University of the Fraser Valley/Flickr
Greg Neinstein
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