Every year too many of our kids are suffering concussions or mild traumatic brain injuries in youth sports. And we all want to bring these numbers down. But it’s hard to prevent concussions and sports-related head injuries if we don’t know how kids are injuring themselves.

So, a group of Canadian researchers as set off to do just that; figure out exactly how brain injuries among kids playing sports are taking place in order to create and implement new ways to make sports safer for the kids.

The study is out of St. Michael’s Hospital in Canada and the researchers have collected and evaluated data from Canadian Hospitals Reporting and Prevention Program. The scientists looked at data from almost 13,000 children and youth aged 5-19 who had a sports-related brain injury between 1990 and 2009. The results appeared in the journal PLOS ONE.

What they found was that, in Canada, over half of the brain injuries sustained by youth were from hockey (44.3%). And within this subset the cause of the injuries were pretty clear, player-to-player contact and contact with a goal posts or boards. Thus, the solution is relatively simple – better pads and padding on goals and boards.

The data also demonstrated significant percentages in terms of head injuries among soccer, baseball and softball, and football players. And again, the cause of head injuries from these sports was also fairly clear: kids standing too close to the batter or being hit with a ball, or players colliding in soccer and football.

Ultimately, what the study has shown is that there is a significant opportunity to learn from this data and adopt better rules and safety policies to make sure that our kids are safe when they take to the field.

If you would like to read more about the study and its findings click here.

The White House this week announced a new initiative at the federal level to better understand and map the human brain. An accurate map of the brain could greatly benefit traumatic brain injury victims as well as personal injury victims who suffer from post traumatic stress disorder or any number of brain disorders.

The White House plans to commit $100 million in funding in the first year of the initiative, much of which will come from the Defense Department. And because traumatic brain injury and mild traumatic brain injury (concussions) are the signature injuries for the recent wars in the middle east the Defense Department’s involvement makes perfect sense.

But not everyone is a fan with the President’s proposal. First, some critics argue that if the White House was truly serious, they would have Congress on board and they would be committing a far greater sum than $100 million. Second, some critics have actually argued that committing that much money behind one single project could harm numerous other projects that are underway and have been underway for years (see LA Times OP-ED here).

The involvement of the Defense Department will come from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which works on brain research that aids soldiers recovering from memory loss due to brain injuries as well as prosthetic technology for soldiers who have suffered spinal cord injuries. In fact, DARPA is already involved with numerous programs involving neuroscience with non-defense applications.

As personal injury attorneys who deal on a daily basis with individuals who have sustained serious head injuries, concussions, and brain injuries ranging from TBI to MTBI, we applaud the White House for it’s initiative and focus on mapping of the human brain due the benefits such a project can bring to the general public and specifically to personal injury victims.

But what is truly needed is not a re-bundling of current Defense Department programs for a photo-op, but a serious and prolonged emphasis on prevention, diagnosis, care and treatment of a disease (traumatic brain injury) that impacts millions of Americans annually. We are hopeful.

The Kessler Foundation has been awarded a $40,000 grant to study remediation of emotional processing deficits in MS patients that may benefit injury victims who have sustained a traumatic brain injury.

The study is being headed by the assistant director of Traumatic Brain Injury Research at the Kessler Foundation.

The research will be one of the first studies to focus on emotional processing deficits in these patients. The study will also look at cognitive processing and quality of life issues as well.

When someone suffers from MS, a neurological disorder, the part of the brain that processes emotions does not function properly. So, an MS patient does not always pick up on emotional cues from facial expressions or a slight tone of voice. The same issues are often seen in injury victims who sustain a traumatic brain injury. 

The scientists who will be performing the research and study are experts in cognitive rehabilitation research in MS and Traumatic brain injury. 

If you would like to read more about the study, the Kessler Foundation, of the scientists involved please click here.

An N.F.L. head, neck and spine doctor has requested that chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) be removed from a governmental workplace safety fact sheet issued for the NFL. 

And the reason why may have more to do with current and future lawsuits as well as PR than science.

CTE is a degenerative brain disease that is caused by repeated head trauma and related to strongly Alzheimer’s disease. It has been found in the brains of dozens of deceased former NFL players in autopsies and via a posthumorus study. And it is being widely studied and examined by researchers and scientists due to the believed impact repeated head trauma (specifically concussions) plays in its formation. 

The workplace safety fact sheet was created by researchers from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. And according to the New York Times (read the article here), they have rejected the NFL doctor’s request. What the NFL doctor suggested was that CTE be replaced with a warning about TBI (traumatic brain injury).

Here is what’s going on: the league has been sued by numerous former players – many of whom are suffering from cognitive disorders like Alzheimer’s disease – and we know that CTE is very closely related to these disorders. And the game itself is under scrutiny because of the prevalence of repeated concussions and the risks to the future health of players that we know these injuries pose.

So, if the the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health comes along and issues a fact sheet about the potential hazards of playing football and on that list is CTE – a) it’s not exactly good PR for the league or the sport and b) it really doesn’t help their case (their legal case).

Replacing CTE with TBI of course sounds a little better. Is there a risk that a football player will suffer a traumatic brain injury? Of course. But there are plenty of experts (and we are sure the league has dozens of them) who will say that that risk can be accounted for and minimized.

But if CTE is caused by repeated concussions, and it leads to cognitive disorders like Alzheimer’s disease, how do you prevent against concussions in football and why in the world would anyone play a sport that has the likelihood of leading to such diseases? The answer is you wouldn’t . . . 

Here in San Francisco, unfortunately, we have a significant homeless population and problem. But could we also have a traumatic brain injury (TBI) problem among this population of which we are not aware?

According to a new study by Canadian researchers and published in the journal BMC Public Health, the homeless population has a disproportionately higher risk for TBI compared to the general population.

According to the studies, researchers found that somewhere between between 8 and 53 percent  of homeless people suffer from traumatic brain injuries. And the majority of these brain injury victims sustained a TBI before becoming homeless.

Traumatic brain injury impacts reason and judgment, memory, social skills, impulse control and a long list of other cognitive functions. What this research, and the nature of brain injury, demonstrates is that it is possible the effects of these individuals’ TBI led to their homelessness.

From our own personal injury practice, we have seen first hand the difference access to quality health care can make for an injury victim, especially where the injury is as complicated and intricate as a traumatic brain injury. It is not unreasonable to assume that many of these individuals who are now homeless due to a brain injury could have been vibrant contributing members of our society if only they had received adequate health care.

When someone sustains a traumatic brain injury in a car accident or due to a fall or during a sports activity, often the symptoms are subtle and begin slowly.

As a personal injury attorney early in my career, I represented a young woman who was involved in a car accident. The accident was serious, both cars were totalled, but fortunately neither driver was seriously injured, or so we thought.

My client, the party who was not at fault in the accident, was a young and vibrant nursing student with a 4.0 average and internships waiting for her at any area hospital she wanted. She had been a top student her entire life. And what she wanted to do with her life was help others.

And so it was only natural immediately following the accident that the first thing this young nursing student did was check on the other driver and make sure that he was okay and not injured. He was fine. He was mad at having totalled his father’s SUV and having ran a red light but other than that he was okay.

So my client called her parents and a friend to let them know what had happened and then sat down on the curb to try and gather her thoughts. Slowly she began to feel dizzy and a little disoriented. But she shook it off as nerves and even denied treatment at the scene figuring that she just needed to go home and get some rest and that things would be fine. They weren’t.

In the days and weeks to come first she simply had a sore and stiff neck from what her doctor thought was simple whiplash from the accident. Btu then, very slowly, began showing up. She had headaches, which she had never had before. Then she started having memory problems – first minor things like where she left her keys, then bigger issues like whole conversations. She started having concentration problems and reading difficulties and her school work began to suffer. And this is when she knew something was seriously wrong and she sought medical help.

What fallowed was a serious of never ending doctor appointments including specialist after specialist who simply could not find anything abnormal on any of the imaging studies that were ordered and reviewed. Despite this lack of evidence what had happened, and what she was suffering from, was clear: she had suffered a mild traumatic brain injury or concussion induced by the whiplash that she had sustained in her car accident.

She was told by countless doctors that she should get better over time and that her symptoms would go away. They didn’t and she didn’t. Her grades took a nose-dive, she dropped out of school, and was forced to move back home and in with her parents. Her entire life was placed on hold.

What happened to this young nursing student unfortunately we see with brain injury victims on a regular basis. Symptoms from a concussion or mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) often take days or even weeks to show up. And then they often do so slowly. And what makes all of these cases difficult is that the CT scans, MRIs and other imaging studies are often negative for any abnormalities.

And from a legal standpoint these cases couldn’t be more challenging. The difficult nature of both the medical and legal aspects of a personal injury matter involving a concussion or mild traumatic brain injury makes your selection of an attorney all the more important.

My client, the nursing student, was fortunate. She found attorneys who were willing to fight for her and doctors that cared and eventually was able to put her life back together. If you or a friend or a family member sustains a brain injury in a personal injury accident you should want the same. So contact us, we’d like to help.

Traumatic brain injury impacts millions of individuals across the country every year and too many here in the San Francisco Bay Area. We have presented videos on how to prevent these injuries with simple suggestions and preventative measures (watch the video here). One of those measures is wearing a helmet, especially if you bike.

But not just any helmet. You need a helmet that protects as much of your head as possible, especially on the sides where a majority of traumatic brain injuries take place. And you need to use the helmet properly; that is, there is a right and wrong way to wear a helmet

Pictured on the right is an illustration depicting the proper way in which to wear a bicycle helmet. When choosing a helmet make sure to look for a helmet that has “Snell B-95″ approval and are designed for multiple sports. The CPSC has a website that rates particular helmets for various activities. You can find the CPSC’s site here.

Helmet use has been estimated to reduce your risk of a brain injury by as much as 85 percent. So if you are biking to work in San Francisco or getting a workout on Skyline Blvd in Santa Clara County, wear a helmet and be safe.