Packers 2018 "What If" Draft

[Deputy Nutz]

I think football has played a role, but how big? I think it is no more of an impact than any of the other hits to the head that I have had. At least with football I had a helmet on. There is an agenda out on football. Hockey has a much bigger issue and the NHL is flat ignoring it. The NFL is doing their best to get out in front of it and bring awareness to the issue. The game of football has never been safer at any level, that is a fact.

[pbmax]

Well, it's not perfectly clear what the numbers are/will be in apples for apples comparisons. CTE is real, and long-term effects of repeated collisions are real (the longer they occur of lifespan and the total number correlates with severity of symptoms). But what still remains to be fleshed out is concussion symptoms compared to controls from other sports where collisions happen. Some of the numbers from Lacross and soccer are interesting. Again, what really seems to matter is the number of collisions over a lot of years, so some collision sports that have a shorter run (high school and/or college only), and people who play fewer years in high school, college, and NFL don't have the same prognosis. A good comparison will be more aggressive and longitudinal hockey and soccer players. (the acceleration of headers in soccer are almost twice as much as football hits and hockey head-to-head collisions are in-between).

Science of this is not 'settled' - other than correlation of sustained/repeated impacts over years - and much of the reporting is hysterical.

You have a link to the soccer data?

[mraynrand]

You have a link to the soccer data?

No, I know it second hand. I'd have to do some work to dig up the relevant studies. The acceleration paper is The Journal of trauma 48(5):938-41 · June 2000.

[mraynrand]

This is the best I could find in a reasonably decent NCBI search:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/art...ihms639401.pdf

A recent study comparing the concussion rate in high school football compared to collegiate football found that high school football was associated with concussion rate of 0.21 per 1,000 athlete exposures (A–E) in practice and 1.55 concussions per 1,000 A–E in competitions, compared to 0.39 per 1,000 A-E in practice and a rate of 3.02 concussions per 1,000 A-E in competitions in collegiate football players [68]. Multiple concussions were noted in 81 of 233 (34.9 %) high school football athletes [106]. Concussions are also frequent in soccer, the most popular sport worldwide with an estimated 265 million male and female players [102]. Causes of concussion in soccer include heading, or using the head to advance or redirect the ball—a unique feature of the sport—or collisions with another player, the goalpost, or the ground. Estimates of the concussion rate in high school soccer range from 1.38 concussions per 1,000 game time A-E for boys to 1.80 for girls [68]. Concussions in girls high school soccer rank second only to boys high school football [116]. Studies using accelerometers to measure the peak accelerations of the head during soccer heading found linear accelerations as high as 54.7g in high school players heading a soccer ball kicked from a distance of 30 yards, more than the average peak accelerations of 29.2 or 35g that occur in football or ice hockey [142]. Recently, head accelerations associated with heading in girls’ youth soccer were found to range from 4.5 to 62.9g and included substantial rotational acceleration at times [85]. Concussions also occur in rugby and Australian Rules football, although the data are not as widely available. In a cohort of 3,207 male nonprofessional rugby players followed for one or more seasons, the incidence of mTBI was 7.97 per 1,000 player game hours, with 313 players (9.8 %) sustaining 1 or more mTBIs during the study. Players who wore protective headgear during games were at a reduced risk (incident rate ratio 0.57; 95 % confidence interval [CI], 0.40–0.82), while the risk nearly doubled for players who had sustained one or more mTBIs within the previous 12 months [94].

[mraynrand]

BTW, I was unable to find any kind of retrospective controlled study. Dr. Bennet Omalu the forensic pathologist in "Concussion" mostly has reported cases studies and some papers on trying to better describe the CTE phenotype. Most of the current literature says that understanding CTE is "in it's infancy" and the literature reflects this. I think there is one marginally trustworthy biomarker, but if I understand the literature correctly, it is not standardized or widely used. A 2005 paper is the only retrospective study on pro athletes I can find and it is a survey of players with - it looks like, I haven't read the whole thing - no good control group.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16239884

Association between recurrent concussion and late-life cognitive impairment in retired professional football players.

Guskiewicz KM1, Marshall SW, Bailes J, McCrea M, Cantu RC, Randolph C, Jordan BD.
Author information
Abstract
OBJECTIVE:
Cerebral concussion is common in collision sports such as football, yet the chronic neurological effects of recurrent concussion are not well understood. The purpose of our study was to investigate the association between previous head injury and the likelihood of developing mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease in a unique group of retired professional football players with previous head injury exposure.
METHODS:
A general health questionnaire was completed by 2552 retired professional football players with an average age of 53.8 (+/-13.4) years and an average professional football playing career of 6.6 (+/- 3.6) years. A second questionnaire focusing on memory and issues related to MCI was then completed by a subset of 758 retired professional football players (> or = 50 yr of age). Results on MCI were then cross-tabulated with results from the original health questionnaire for this subset of older retirees.
RESULTS:
Of the former players, 61% sustained at least one concussion during their professional football career, and 24% sustained three or more concussions. Statistical analysis of the data identified an association between recurrent concussion and clinically diagnosed MCI (chi = 7.82, df = 2, P = 0.02) and self-reported significant memory impairments (chi = 19.75, df = 2, P = 0.001). Retired players with three or more reported concussions had a fivefold prevalence of MCI diagnosis and a threefold prevalence of reported significant memory problems compared with retirees without a history of concussion. Although there was not an association between recurrent concussion and Alzheimer's disease, we observed an earlier onset of Alzheimer's disease in the retirees than in the general American male population.
CONCLUSION:
Our findings suggest that the onset of dementia-related syndromes may be initiated by repetitive cerebral concussions in professional football players.

[Zool]

I think football has played a role, but how big? I think it is no more of an impact than any of the other hits to the head that I have had. At least with football I had a helmet on. There is an agenda out on football. Hockey has a much bigger issue and the NHL is flat ignoring it. The NFL is doing their best to get out in front of it and bring awareness to the issue. The game of football has never been safer at any level, that is a fact.

Football is taking a big hit right now because they flat out lied about what they knew about concussions and falsified medical findings in a published medical study. The head of brain injury medicine for the NFL studied rheumatology. The league owners and the GM are lying assholes, and that is a fact.