by Publisher | Feb 23, 2011 | News Coverage, Print Coverage
TALLAHASSEE — David Goldstein was a freshman on his high school soccer team last year when he was called in to sub during district finals.
It was a dream situation, one he couldn’t let go even after colliding head-to-head with another player in the first half. “My hands went to my head, and I knew something wasn’t right,” he said.
Goldstein played through the second half for Miami’s Ransom Everglades and during a scrimmage the next day. He didn’t figure out he was probably suffering from a concussion until he could hardly move from the pain. Goldstein says he could have avoided the headaches, nausea and months of hourslong naps during school had he been properly educated about brain injuries and stopped playing.
Now he’s on a mission with a batch of state lawmakers, former NFL players and medical experts. They spoke at the Capitol on Tuesday to support a bill that aims to curb concussions in youth sports through education and regulation.
“In the past, it was ‘you got your bell rung.’ You shake it off and got back in the game,” said Rep. Ronald Renuart, R-Ponte Vedra Beach, a bill sponsor.
HB 301 and SB 730 would require the Florida High School Athletic Association to remove athletes showing signs of a concussion during a game or practice until they receive clearance from a medical professional.
Students and parents would sign consent forms that explain the risk of concussions, and returning to play too soon, every year before the start of practice or games. These rules would not just apply to FHSAA-governed sports, but to organized youth athletics at government-owned facilities. The FHSAA supports the measure.
National experts estimate 140,000 high school athletes suffer concussions every year. About 40 percent return to play before they have recovered. Repeat concussions can affect mood, social development, memory and worse, Renuart said.
A national poll last fall found that only 8 percent of parents with children ages 12-17 who play school sports have read or heard about the risks of repeat concussions.
Nine states have passed similar bills. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell wants each state to have a law by 2015, said Kenneth Edmonds, the league’s government relations and public policy director.
Goldstein still plays soccer, though only while wearing a rugby helmet. He came to Tallahassee with his parents, Cheryl and Adam, who is president and CEO of Royal Caribbean International.
“Now I know, and I’m a different player now,” he said. “I’m trying to spread that message to as many people as possible.”
by Publisher | Feb 22, 2011 | News Coverage, Print Coverage
Tallahassee, Florida — Every year, an estimated 140,000 high school athletes suffer concussions across the United States.
Athletes say, too often, they just dismiss the injury as “getting your bell rung” and they return to play before they’re ready.
The Brain Injury Association of Florida says that can be especially dangerous for the still-developing brains of young people.
Now a proposed bill aims to prevent injured high school athletes from returning to play too soon.
The legislation would require injured students to receive written clearance from a doctor before returning to play, as well as educatestudents, coaches and parents about the dangers and symptoms of concussions.
Sixteen-year-old David Goldstein spoke in favor of the bill at the state Capitol on Tuesday. He painfully understands the consequences of ignoring the symptoms of a concussion.
Goldstein sustained a serious concussion last year during a soccergame and even though it caused headaches, nausea and fatigue, he continued to play.
Now he knows that was a mistake. Goldstein thinks the bill will help prevent other student athletes from going through his experience.
“I learned the hard way and it didn’t have to be that way. That’s why I support the sports concussion legislation because it is about education and trying to prevent serious or permanent brain damage by keeping an injured player from going back into the game too soon.”
Rep. Ronald “Doc” Renuart, a doctor for more than 40 years, is sponsoring the legislation.
He says it would also create uniform guidelines for schools on removing athletes from a game when they suffer head injuries.
“This is a time for us to work together to protect our student athletes when they’re at the most vulnerable stages of brain development. I just met David for the first time today and thought he was rather articulate. But unfortunately his very compelling story is not unique and it points out the need that we have to have standards across the state to protect our students.”
Former NFL Player Lawrence Dawsey says he has a 12-year-old son that plays sports. Dawsey says a bill like this is needed.
“To have a bill like this in place would definitely make me as a parent feel more comfortable knowing that we’re doing all that we can do as a state to help our kids be successful on the field as well as off the field .”
The Brain Injury Association is also unveiling a new database of services available for people with traumatic brain injuries and their families. The website is located at: www.byyourside.org.
Dave Heller
by Publisher | Oct 11, 2010 | News Coverage, Print Coverage
University of Miami program targets concussions in young athletes
If your high school son or daughter gets knocked in the head on the playing field anywhere in Miami-Dade, chances are Dr. Gillian Hotz and her colleague Dr. Kester Nedd will soon be on your speed dial.
The two have teamed up to spread the word on concussions and push for high school athletes to be tested before an injury occurs, thus establishing a baseline that will help determine treatment and assess their recovery.
At the start of the 2009 school year, Hotz said she was seeing three to four young athletes a week at the clinic at the University of Miami Hospital. This year, she’s seeing about 14 or 15 kids a week who have head injuries from playing football, soccer and other sports.
It’s not that the sports have become more dangerous. On the contrary, sports equipment is improving, said Vincent Scavo, who spent 17 years in the Miami-Dade County Schools system as an athletic trainer.
“What’s happening now is we’re educating people better,” Scavo said. “The way we handled equipment years ago was we gave the athlete a helmet and said, `Go play.’ Now, we’re conscious of how we fit the helmet. . . . That’s so important today. The hitting is unbelievable — even at the high school level.”
Scavo’s son Alec is a senior and defensive lineman on the football team at Christopher Columbus High School.
Hotz and Scavo, now the director of Sports Medicine Services at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, attribute the increase in clinic visits to better awareness and education. Teachers and coaches have been trained to identify concussion symptoms, which include headaches, dizziness and vision problems.
“A few years ago people had a headache or some type of concussion symptom and they would ignore it and say they are fine,” Scavo said. “We realize now that’s not the way to go. Concussions are dangerous. Athletes don’t want to come out of the game. That’s why it’s so important that athletic trainers deal with athletes and teachers to educate the athlete and say, `It’s OK, you have a problem, we’ll get you better.’ ”
But more needs to be done.
Along with The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, Ransom Everglades in Coconut Grove has teamed with the UM to increase awareness of concussions in sports and raise money to help schools in Miami-Dade adopt ImPACT testing. The goal is to get a baseline reading for all public high school football players next year.
So far, Ransom, Miami Palmetto Senior High, G. Holmes Braddock Senior High and Terra Environmental Research Institute offer ImPACT baseline testing for its student athletes. Colleges and the NFL also use the program.
“ImPACT is an amazing tool, a positive step forward,” said Cheryl Golden, instructional supervisor for Miami-Dade County Public Schools. “Head injuries are an enigma to parents, coaches and kids. It’s not like a broken bone that you can X-ray. With a concussion you don’t have physical proof and that’s what makes ImPACT so valuable.”
Students are tested by answering questions in a computer program; the questions revolve around memory, reflex and timed situations. The ImPACT materials can cost about $600 per school.
“It’s tough for these schools, they don’t have resources,” Hotz said. “They are doing the best they can. Some of these programs in rural parks don’t have a trainer. It’s a dad or a neighbor that’s a coach. If a kid’s really not right, he’s got to be seen, he’s got to be followed, and the school has to play a role in that. They are the gatekeeper.”
David Goldstein, 15, has become one such gatekeeper.
In September, the Ransom 10th-grader addressed representatives from The Miami Project, joining with speaker Marc Buonoconti, a Citadel University football player who was paralyzed during a game in 1985.
Goldstein introduced his school to the work done at the UM clinic after he suffered his third head injury in four years while playing soccer in January.
“I struggled with my situation for a long time. I found doctors Hotz and Nedd here at the Sports Medical Center and they helped me out,” Goldstein said.
The first step in his rehabilitation was ImPACT’s 30-minute computerized test to gauge his motor skills and to determine how serious his head injury was.
“My mental skills were nowhere near what they should have been,” Goldstein said. “They helped me out by finally getting me on medicine. I had a timeline of what to do when and how to come back from the injury. They introduced me to concussion testing.”
Quite a difference from months earlier. After Goldstein’s accident on the field, he practiced the next day.
“I got into the car after and collapsed under the pain,” he said. “I couldn’t move. I went to a couple neurologists who said I should never play soccer again,” he said.
“I’ve played since I was 4. To think I couldn’t play again devastated me. I thought I would wait it out but after three to four months I was having so much pain I had to sleep through a couple periods of school a day,” Goldstein said.
His mission now: Make baseline testing the norm at all schools by the 2011-2012 year.
For a 10-year period ending in 2007, the American Academy of Pediatrics tracked emergency room visits for concussion in children ages 8 to 13 and for teenagers who are all involved in organized sports. Emergency room visits among the younger group doubled and increased by more than 200 percent among the teens. More than 500,000 visits were reported for the combined groups.
Part of the reason for the increase, Nedd says, is the evolution of awareness and treatment. Concussions, and the push for baseline testing of student athletes, has received national attention.
Nedd acknowledged that injuries can’t be completely avoided in contact sports like boxing and football.
“The real issue is the long-term impact on people’s lives. Can they return to work? At school, can they perform at a level that will be deemed acceptable? The interpersonal relationships. When you look at pro athletes and the problems they have, a lot of time they have unrecognizable head injuries they received in junior high and high school. Even mild head injuries affect personality.”
The formative pre-teen and teen years can be most critical, Nedd said.
“Some of the ills we have in society may have a basis in an injury to the brain at an early age.”
Nicholas Johnson, a 10th-grade defensive end at Coral Gables High, sits on an examination table inside the University of Miami Hospital on a recent Tuesday afternoon.
The preceding Wednesday, he suffered a head injury during a football game.
“One of the players on the other team hit me helmet to helmet at least six times,” said Johnson, 15.
He wasn’t overly concerned during the excitement of the game, he said. “I got up, didn’t think much of it and went back to the huddle. It didn’t bother me until I got home that night.”
Thursday, his vision blurred, he couldn’t concentrate on a test in sixth period and his head started to hurt.
That first night, his mother recommended that Nicholas check in with Coral Gables’ athletic trainer, who prescribed immediate rest and set up an appointment for Nicholas at the UM clinic to undergo testing.
“I was glad to see they are very conscientious and were paying close attention to what’s happening with him,” said his mother, Doris Johnson.
Lacking a baseline score, the doctors ran Nicholas through a series of tests, both paper and pencil question-and-answer, and neurological tests of motor skills.
The verdict? An inner ear injury. No football until further tests show a return to normalcy.
“I’m upset because tomorrow is one of our biggest games against Columbus and I can’t play,” Nicholas said.
It could be worse.
“Some families freak out,” Hotz said. “I’ve had 200-pound kids crying that they are out of football. If they reach baseline, with no symptoms, we’ll clear them. But every kid, every hit is different.”
by Publisher | Sep 28, 2010 | News Coverage, Print Coverage
The Miller School and the KiDZ Neuroscience Center at The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis held a special assembly at Ransom Everglades School in Coconut Grove this month to educate students about spinal cord injury and concussion in sports.
At the September 13 assembly, Marc Buoniconti, president of The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, discussed the college football injury that left him paralyzed 25 years ago and the advances in spinal cord injury research, including the start of human trials, that hold promise of a cure.
And Gillian Hotz, Ph.D., director of the Concussion Program at UHealth Sports Medicine, reviewed the signs and symptoms of concussion and described how Ransom students will be tested with ImPACT this fall.
A computerized neurocognitive assessment tool, ImPACT is used by coaches, athletic trainers, doctors, and other health professionals to help determine whether athletes are fit to return to play after suffering a concussion. Administered pre-season, the 30-minute test establishes a baseline which can be used to compare to post-injury tests, and to devise the best course of treatment.
Behind Miami Project President Marc Buoniconti, center, are from left, Claude Grubair, athletic director; Adam Goldstein, parent; Ellen Moceri, head of Ransom; David Goldstein, student; Gillian Hotz, Ph.D., and Cheryl Goldstein, parent.
Hotz also introduced David Goldstein, a 10th-grade student who suffered multiple concussions while playing soccer. David described how Hotz and Kester Nedd, D.O., voluntary associate professor of neurology, treated his post concussive symptoms at the UHealth Sports Medicine Concussion Clinic and recommended the return-to-play program under which he gradually improved and was able to resume playing soccer.
David and Ransom are now teaming up to raise money for ImPACT testing for all of Miami-Dade County’s public high school football players starting next spring, and to support the research efforts of the Concussion Program.
School Board ImPACT Project
