(10/27/22 Newsletter) PolarCap’s head cooling speeds recovery in hockey players
The lead article this week, Do cooler heads prevail? A study using the PolarCap System shows cooling treatment results in shorter recovery time, is in the Therapies Currently Available category.
In this newsletter: Opportunities, Education, Pathophysiology, Self-Care, Therapies Currently Available, Mental Health, Youth, Women’s Health, & Culture.
We appreciate the Concussion Alliance Interns and staff who created this edition:
Writers: Susan Klein, Minhong Kim, Melissa Sodko, Melissa Brown, Henry Petrini, Kira Kunzman, Conor Gormally, and Malayka Gormally
Editors: Conor Gormally and Malayka Gormally
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Opportunities
Thursday, October 27, 10 am - 5:30p pm EST: A free virtual course, the 6th annual CTE Conference, will be hosted by the BU Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. Click here to register and join the course.
Friday, October 28, 1 am PST: A free webinar, Trauma 101, will cover “neurological & academic impacts of trauma, trauma-responsive classroom strategies & interventions, and educator wellness.” Hosted by The Center on Brain Injury Research and Training.
Thursday, November 3, 12:00 pm PST: A free online class, Memory and Attention Tools, covering “strategies for improving memory and attention following Brain Injury.” The class is presented by Dr. Del Piero and hosted by the Brain Injury Alliance of WA State. Register in advance; you do not need to be a WA state resident to attend.
Tuesday, November 8, 6:00 pm EST: a free online webinar on Dizziness, presented by Dr. John Rutka, hosted by the Canadian Concussion Centre. Register in advance.
Podcast episode now available: Dr. Julie Stamm gives a “Concussion Concerns” talk on the Athletic Training Chat podcast. Dr. Stamm is the author of The Brain on Youth Sports, and she has been a guest speaker for our internship program.
Education
Neuroscientist breaks down misconceptions about concussions
Please see our blog post to read this synopsis.
Pathophysiology
Goldilocks effect: screen time in moderation after concussion may be “just right”
Please see our blog post to read this synopsis.
Self-Care
Nutrition “may play a positive role” but research not yet able to give specific recommendations
Please see our blog post to read this synopsis.
Therapies Currently Available
Do cooler heads prevail? A study using the PolarCap System shows cooling treatment results in shorter recovery time
Please see our blog post to read this synopsis.
Mental Health
Increased number and severity of concussion symptoms related to preexisting mental health conditions
Please see our blog post to read this synopsis.
Youth
Synthetic fields: are they adding to concussion risk?
Please see our blog post to read this synopsis.
Women’s Health
Female high school athletes who are more specialized are five times more likely to have a history of concussion
A study found that female high school athletes who were highly specialized in their athletic pursuits were five times more likely to have a history of concussion compared to female high school athletes who were less specialized in their athletic pursuits.
The study by Ehiamen T. Okoruwa, MD, et al., published in Sports Health: A Multidisciplinary Approach, used data from questionnaires filled out by 219 female HS athletes to classify the athletes as having low, moderate, or high specialization. Compared to the athletes with low specialization, the high-specialization female athletes were 2.93 times more likely to have an injury history and 5 times more likely to have a history of concussion.
For moderately specialized athletes, no odds ratio for a history of concussion is mentioned. Still, these athletes were 3.62 times more likely to have a stress fracture history than low-specialization athletes. The study authors suggest that understanding the risk stratification associated with specialization will aid “in preventing athlete injury.”
Culture
Concussion expert Dr. Paul McCrory’s pattern of publication misconduct
The British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM) recently retracted nine more articles published by renowned concussion expert Dr. Paul McCrory. The nine retractions include five cases of plagiarism, three cases of redundant publication, and one case of misquotation. An article by Stephen T Casper and Adam Finkel, also published in BJSM, refers to this misquotation of Thorndike as a “falsified quote” and posits that “The warping of Thorndike’s recommendation was an attempted erasure of a warning about potentially foreseeable and worrying consequence of head impacts.”
McCrory, who served as editor-in-chief of BJSM between 2001 and 2008 and chaired the influential Concussion in Sport Group (CISG), first faced plagiarism allegations in March of this year. In light of the initial plagiarism allegations, McCrory stepped down from his position as chair of the Concussion in Sport Group (CISG). A subsequent investigation led BJSM to retract one of McCrory’s editorials for “unlawful and indefensible breach of copyright.”
Further allegations about McCrory’s publications led BJSM and its publisher, the British Medical Journal (BMJ), to conduct a more thorough investigation into McCrory’s former work. This investigation revealed a “pattern of publication misconduct on the part of McCrory,” causing the BJSM to “place a notice to readers, an expression of concern, on all articles published in the BJSM of which McCrory is identified as the single author.”
The British Medical Journal concludes that “the scientific record relies on trust, and BMJ’s trust in McCrory’s work—specifically the articles that he has published as a single author—is broken.”
Executive Editor
Concussion Alliance Co-founder, Co-executive Director, and Internship Program Director Conor Gormally