“It’s like a moving freight train coming at you and it’s just fluid surrounding the brain and all it takes is contact for it to bump off the side of your skull.”-Former NHL forward Keith Primeau
St. Louis Blues forward David Perron missed over a year due to a concussion he sustained on Nov. 4, 2010. (Getty Images)
Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines an epidemic as an illness that affects “a disproportionately large number of individuals” within a community at the same time. Concussions have grown to become an epidemic in the National Hockey League (NHL).
Once thought to be an issue limited to the enforcers, those who are known for leveling the big hits and fighting night-in and night-out, mild head trauma in the NHL has spread like an unknown virus over the past few seasons, with severe consequences for its victims.
“It’s not just being able to remember a telephone number or being able to read a book,” NHL Players’ Association (NHLPA) ombudsman Eric Lindros said in an interview with The Toronto Star. “It is all the elements of your life and how they all interact together that create your every day, your being. And when you go through some of these things, it’s hell on wheels, not just for yourself, but for everyone surrounding you.”
Graphic via The Orange County Register
A concussion is a form of traumatic brain injury that results from the head colliding with or being struck by another object. This blow to the head essentially causes the brain to bounce against the walls of the skull.
In more severe cases, this jostling causes blood vessels to tear, which leads to clotting between the brain and Dura, the tough outer layer beneath the skull that supplies protective spinal fluid to the skull.
“It’s like a moving freight train coming at you and it’s just fluid surrounding the brain and all it takes is contact for it to bump off the side of your skull,” former NHL forward Keith Primeau said in an interview with the Toronto Star.
While all concussive hits alter the way the brain functions, the manifested symptoms vary with each individual, meaning doctors have no standard for diagnosis and have difficulty setting timetables for recovery.
Outside of a brief stint earlier this season, Sidney Crosby has not played since suffering a concussion on Jan. 5, 2011. (Photo: Jason Bridge-US Presswire)
Even superstars like Pittsburgh Penguins forward Sidney Crosby, who has been sidelined since he was driven headfirst into the boards by Tampa Bay defenseman Victor Hedman on Jan. 5, 2011, have not been immune to the mild-form of traumatic brain injury that has swept across the NHL.
“You have days when you feel like you’re getting better and the symptoms aren’t quite as bad. Other days they’re a little worse,” he told the media following a team skate in mid-February. “Everyone has different symptoms. That’s the tough thing about getting a gauge on it. It doesn’t always seem consistent.”
In an attempt to “improve the understanding this injury,” the NHL and NHLPA launched a study into the number of concussions reported from 1997-2004.
The findings, which were published in the Canadian Medial Association Journal (CMAJ) in April 2011 by Dr. Brian Benson of the Sport Medicine Centre at the University of Calgary’s faculty of kinesiology, revealed that there were 559 concussions during regular season games.
Pat LaFontaine's tried to battle through the first five concussions he suffered, but it was number six, which occurred when he collided with a teammate, that ended his career in 1998. (Photo: Ray Stubblebine-Reuters via London Free Press)
Not mentioned in Dr. Benson’s report were the at least 32 players who had their careers cut short due to concussions. Included in that list was hall of fame center Pat LaFontaine. LaFontaine scored 468 goals over 15 seasons, but was forced to retire at the age of 33 after suffering the sixth concussion of his career in 1998.
“A neurologist at the Mayo Clinic asked me, ‘Did it feel like someone came along and ripped all the motivation and personality out of you?’ That was exactly what happened to me,” LaFontaine told The Sporting News. “I remember being scared because for the first month after my fifth concussion, I was very depressed at times. I wouldn’t want to come out of my room. My wife was really scared because the littlest things would set me off.”
Dr. Benson’s study was brought to a halt following the 2004 season due to a labor dispute between the NHL and the Players’ Association that resulted in the cancellation of the 2004-05 season. Play resumed for the 2005-06 season, but there were no official updates on the league’s concussion studies until their seven-year study was released last year.
In an interview with The Associated Press following the publication of his findings, Dr. Benson, who is on contract with the NHL as a concussion data analyst, said the study was on-going and that he hoped to have the findings from the 2006-11 study published within the year.
Although these updated results have yet to be published, independent sources, most notably, the Orange County Register, the Canadian Broadcast Company (CBC) and The Concussion Blog, have kept a running tally of the number of concussions reported in the NHL since the lockout.
While each publication has its unique method for tracking concussions (specifically The Concussion Blog, which analyzes video and reports of each “upper body” and “undisclosed” injury), there has consistently been an upward trend in the number of concussions sustained by NHL players since 2006 (see figure 1).
Figure 1
Part Two: The Double-Edged Sword
[...] Part 1: A Mind-Boggling Issue [...]