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Arizona AT helps high school hockey players

Sarah Schodrof, a certified athletic trainer at the Banner Concussion Center in downtown Phoenix, has a new group of patients: high school hockey players.

This summer, Banner Health partnered with the Arizona High School Hockey Association, a youth hockey league, to educate and to raise concussion awareness amongst its student-athletes. Schodrof spent two weeks visiting the Valley ice rinks to discuss concussion protocol with the league’s coaches and staff.

In August, about 500 of AHSHA’s players underwent concussion baseline testing, a procedure that is used to gather information about an individual’s normal brain function. Once a player is suspected of sustaining a concussion, his or her post-injury results can be compared to their initial baseline test.

Visual and verbal memory, motor-speed and reaction time are tested, framing a detailed picture of how an individual player thinks.

“We can compare everyone to the normal data, but that’s not how everyone thinks,” Schodrof said. “Everyone is different. Now, we have an individual baseline for every one of these 500 players to get them back on their own pace.”

This new partnership is a part of the recent concussion management procedures AHSHA implemented. The organization’s injury guidelines stem from USA Hockey as well as the ImPACT, or Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing program, which is a computerized concussion diagnostic test the athletic trainers use to determine when it is safe for a player to return. ImPACT testing is used by multiple collegiate and professional teams.

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Kansas athletic trainers prevent concussions

Most parents know the risk of getting a concussion when their child plays football.

With football season just starting, certified athletic trainers are doing tests before concussions actually happen.

Certified athletic trainers normally do concussion testing after death from the incident or serious injuries. But now they want to take extra steps to prevent it before it actually happens.

One parent KSN talked to says it’s important to do the testing now.

“I’m so glad they’ve implemented it,” said Darren Roberts who’s an alumni of Kapaun Mt. Carmel High School and a parent of linebacker. He wants to make sure his son is taking extra steps to be safe.

“I think it’s very important,” said Roberts. “You want to take every precaution you can with your son, your child. Any sport they’re taking, you want to put them in the safest position possible.”

His son, Jacob Roberts, took preemptive testing before the football season.

“They have the kids come in a morning and it’s about a half hour to take the test. They ask them questions and they perform functions and they get a baseline for them,” said Roberts.

Kapaun Mt. Carmel High School Certified Athletic Trainer Morgan Summers says they do baseline testing for all athletes to find out where they are physically.

“What it really helps with is finding out if that athlete is ready to return to play and even to return to the classroom,” said Summers. “We know where they were at before the injury and then where they come in afterward.”

This gives the school the opportunity to monitor the progress of how long their symptoms last and how many symptoms they have.

“An athlete in the past may have been able to deny having a headache, or how severe a headache might have been,” Summers said. “There’s many other symptoms to look for that parents can be aware of that the teachers hand out because we implement the entire staff.”

Taking care of your body is what’s most important to Roberts.

“There’s life after football, life after sports. So it’s always most important that they take care of themselves.”

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:

Most parents know the risk of getting a concussion when their child plays football.

With football season just starting, certified athletic trainers are doing tests before concussions actually happen.

Certified athletic trainers normally do concussion testing after death from the incident or serious injuries. But now they want to take extra steps to prevent it before it actually happens.

One parent KSN talked to says it’s important to do the testing now.

“I’m so glad they’ve implemented it,” said Darren Roberts who’s an alumni of Kapaun Mt. Carmel High School and a parent of linebacker. He wants to make sure his son is taking extra steps to be safe.

“I think it’s very important,” said Roberts. “You want to take every precaution you can with your son, your child. Any sport they’re taking, you want to put them in the safest position possible.”

His son, Jacob Roberts, took preemptive testing before the football season.

“They have the kids come in a morning and it’s about a half hour to take the test. They ask them questions and they perform functions and they get a baseline for them,” said Roberts.

Kapaun Mt. Carmel High School Certified Athletic Trainer Morgan Summers says they do baseline testing for all athletes to find out where they are physically.

“What it really helps with is finding out if that athlete is ready to return to play and even to return to the classroom,” said Summers. “We know where they were at before the injury and then where they come in afterward.”

This gives the school the opportunity to monitor the progress of how long their symptoms last and how many symptoms they have.

“An athlete in the past may have been able to deny having a headache, or how severe a headache might have been,” Summers said. “There’s many other symptoms to look for that parents can be aware of that the teachers hand out because we implement the entire staff.”

Taking care of your body is what’s most important to Roberts.

“There’s life after football, life after sports. So it’s always most important that they take care of themselves.”

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Wisconsin Athletic Trainers Explain Concussion Numbers

Milton High School had 411 students on sports teams last year. About one in 16 of them suffered a concussion.

The 25 concussions reported in Milton last year were up from 18 the year before.

Is that a trend or has modern medicine found a better way to track and diagnose concussions?

The answer lies somewhere in between.

Twenty years ago, concussions were an afterthought in high school sports. A bump on the head was a bump on the head.

Usually, a player who could tell his coach how many fingers he was holding up was sent back into the game.

Times have changed.

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Head injuries are getting serious attention. A concussion—defined as a brain injury caused by a blow to the head or a violent shaking of the head and body—can have debilitating, long-term effects if not treated properly.

Kathy Calkins, a licensed athletic trainer and the head trainer at Janesville Craig, said an increase in documented concussions is due in part to new terminology used to define concussions.

The old definition of a concussion was somebody getting a bump on the head that caused short-term memory loss or a headache. Now, concussions are clearly defined as impaired functioning of some organ, especially the brain, as a result of a violent blow or impact.

Testing has become more sophisticated, too.

Neurocognitive testing is a more scientific alternative to athletes self-reporting after injury. The testing focuses primarily on memory, attention to detail or problem solving. Relying only on athletes’ reports of symptoms might result in them returning to competition prematurely, exposing them to additional injury.

ImPACT testing is a type of neurocognitive test often used by physicians to compare athletes’ post-concussion abilities to baseline scores taken before the injury.

Although ImPACT testing is a valuable tool, most athletes who suffer concussions don’t go through the test before being cleared to return.

Of the 37 documented concussions at Craig during the 2014-15 calendar year, only six athletes went through ImPACT testing before they were allowed to continue any physical activity.

Since 2010, Janesville Parker has documented 92 concussions, with a high of 27 in 2013. Of those 92 concussions, 53 were football-related.

Parker has had 652 athletes out for football since 2010, meaning about one out of every 12 football players in that time suffered a concussion.

The football-related concussions dropped to 11 last year after a documented high of 15 in the 2013 season.

Parker had 740 students participate in a sport during the 2014-15 calendar year, and 26 reported concussions. That means about one out of every 28 suffered a concussion. The Parker participation total counts each student only once regardless of how many sports he or she played.

Morgan Mason, Parker’s head trainer, said the concussion numbers at the school could be misleading.

“In the fall, we tend to devote a lot of time to football and their athletes,” Mason said. “Boys soccer (also a fall sport), in my position, tends to not frequent the athletic training room as much as they probably should, so the numbers get skewed from that.

“Overall, our concussion documentations have increased over the last three years. And you still have a fair share of kids, who even though they sign an agreement not to, hide and don’t report possible concussions.”

Craig, which measures athletic participation by counting each student every time he or she is in a sport, had more than 1,200 participants and 37 concussions last calendar year. That’s an average of one for every 33 athletes.

Milton’s athletic program documented 25 concussions the last calendar year. Of those, nine were football-related, and seven came from boys and girls soccer.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:
http://www.gazettextra.com/20150816/new_terminology_leads_to_rising_concussion_numbers