Lawsuits Flying Against NFL By Ex-Players Over Concussions

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Posted on 25th December 2011 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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The National Football League has a real situation on its hands: Last week a batch of lawsuits were filed against it by retired players who allege they sustained long-term brain damage from concussions during their careers on the gridiron.

Last week was also the week when the NFL mandated that there will be an independently certified athletic trainer, whose job it is to keep an eye out for concussion-related injuries, present at every game.

Was this NFL move just coincidental to the suits, or directly related to them, we wonder.

Several ex-player suits were filed in Atlanta early last week, and the other was filed in Miami last Thursday. The latest lawsuit was lodged by former Miami Dolphins Patrick Surtain, Oronde Gadsden and 19 other players, according to the Associated Press.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/nfl/story/2011-12-23/concussions-lawsuit/52194476/1

That suit alleges that the NFL hid evidence that tied concussions to long-term brain injury. Essentially, the players alleged that the league downplayed the dangerousness of their concussions ”with the intent of inducing NFL players, including plaintiffs, to return to play as soon as physically possible after having suffered a football-related concussion and to promote an aggressive style of football that would attract viewers,” accordingt to AP’s quote from the lawsuit.

The litigation noted that  in the wake of scientific evidence about the long-term impact of concussions, the NFL formed a committee in 1994 to study the issue. But, according to the lawsuit, this supposedly independent committee in 2003 found that concussions didn’t create long-term harm to the brain.

In 2010, the lawsuit rather pointedly noted, the NFL canned the heads of that research committee, and the new chiefs of the committee described the original research was flawed and “infected,” AP reported.

In Atlanta last Wednesday several suits were filed on behalf of  former Green Bay Packer Dorsey Levens, Jamal Lewis, Fulton Kuykendall and Ryan E. Stewart.

http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/sports/136070433.html#

Those suits charged that the NFL “has done eveything in its power to hide the issue and mislead players” about the effects of concussions going back to the 1920s, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Levens’ lawsuit said that he sustained multiple concussions during his eight-year tenure with the Packers. The retired player, who now resides in Atlanta, also played for the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Eagles.

According to the Journal Sentinel, the suit says, “Levens was not warned by defendants of the risk of long-term injury due to football-related concussions or that the league-managed equipment did not protect him from such injury. This was a substanial factor in causing his current injuries.”

Now Levens has brain injuries and symptoms such as headaches and memory loss, according to his suit.

The NFL issued a statement in response to that first batch of suits. It was denial, as usual. The Journal Sentinel printed it.

“The NFL has long made player safety a priority and continues to do so. Any allegation that the NFL intentionally sought to mislead players has no merit. It stands in contrast to the league’s actions to better protect players and advance the science and medical understanding of the management and treatment of concussions.”

Indeed.

On the topic of lawsuits, we like what AOL FanHouse columnist David Steele had to say. First of all, he pointed out that there were actually three groups of recently filed suits against the NFL regarding concussions. One was filed in Miami earlier this month by 12 plaintiffs, including the New Orleans Saints Kyle Turkey and Patrick Surtain. According to Steele, that lawsuit charges that the NFL gave them an anti-inflammatory drug that “magnified the severityy of concussions.”

http://aol.sportingnews.com/nfl/story/2011-12-24/concussion-lawsuits-could-be-tip-of-crisis-for-nfl

“Two lawsuits filed this week by retired players suffering the effects of concussions from their playing days remind everybody that the league still has to answer for itself over its years of neglect,” Steele wrote.

He then referenced the Dec. 8 incident when Pittsburgh Steeler James Harrison did a helmet-to-helmet hit on Colt McCoy of the Cleveland Browns. Harrison was suspended, but the Browns’ handling of McCoy’s had injury was less than exemplary.

Here is what Steele had to say about all this:

<em>Harrison deserved the suspension he received, as a repeat offender and as someone who flouted a clear-cut rule when he hit McCoy helmet-to-helmet late in that Steelers-Browns game.

The Browns, though, deserved punishment for somehow having everybody in their employ, on the field and up in the coaches’ booth, overlook that McCoy, their starting quarterback, was stretched out and motionless on the field after a hit that, literally, halted the game. Not only has McCoy yet to recover, he could not even make the trip to Baltimore for Saturday’s game.

Instead of punishing the Browns — holding them accountable under the league’s own guidelines — the NFL passed the buck. With the union leaning hard on it, the league added an independent trainer, to be approved by league and union, to each game to avoid another oversight.

The NFL responded to a player’s reckless disregard for his and an opponent’s safety with punishment. It responded to a team’s reckless disregard by changing the rules.

It reeked of a double standard. It sends a dangerously conflicted message. It drives yet another wedge between players like Harrison and the league — and between Harrison and his fellow players who are perceived to be punished differently, a perception that does nothing but negatively affect how those players act every time a chance to make the safe, rational decision presents itself.</em>

Steele, rather accurately, wrote that the culture of the game  is a huge obstacle when it comes to concussions.

“The lawsuits and the Harrison-McCoy play from two Thursdays ago illuminate the troubling fact that the culture that created this ongoing concussion problem isn’t changing anytime soon,” Steele wrote. “Players will still not only fight to keep playing at the expense of their own health, and they’ll keep disregarding what they claim to know about the risks in order to keep playing exactly as they always have.”

Let’s hope Steele isn’t right about that.

Ex-Green Bay Packer Lew Carpenter’s Brain Showed Disease

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Posted on 21st December 2011 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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Add former Green Bay Packer Lew Carpenter to the growing list of  pro football players who had degenerative brain disease. And his case adds a disturbing new twist to ongoing medical research. 

Earlier this month the Associated Press reported that Carpenter, who never sustained any known concussions during his NFL career in the 1950s and 1960s, had an advanced form or chronic traumatic encephelopathy (CTE).  Studies of the brains of other deceased pro athletes, football and hockey players, have found the same disease.

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2011111208086

Carpenter, who also played for the Detroit Lions and Cleveland Browns, died a year ago at age 78. But his family agreed to donate his brain to science, as part of research into whether athletes are suffering in abnormal numbers from CTE, which doctors have linked to repeated brain trauma.

Carpenter showed many of the symptoms of CTE before he died. He was having memory problems, and could not control his anger, according to AP.  The examination of his brain didn’t show evidence of Alzheimer’s disease, just the CTE, the wire service reported. 

The lesson to be learned from Carpenter’s case is that an athlete doesn’t have to sustain a full-blown concussion, or concussions, in order to develop CTE. The cumulative effect of mini-concussions, so-called subconcussions, can apparently bring on CTE, as well.

“The amount of subconcussive trauma that he had — he probably had between 1,000 and 1,500 subconcussive blows a year, just from practice and play in games,” likely lead to CTE, Dr. Robert Cantu told AP.

Cantu, a researcher at Boston University, is doing work along with the Veterans Administration Center for the Study of Traumaic Encephalopathy, AP reported.

It’s true that Carpenter –  who finished his career with the Packers, winning two NFL championships — was never diagnosed with a concussion. But back in the day, when he was playing, concussions were not the issue they are today. He may have had some that were missed.

If in fact Carpenter never had a full-blown concussion, his case raises a troubling issue.

“Damage may be caused as much or more by the low-level, or subconcussive, blows to the head as by big hits replayed on the highlgiht shows that leave a player wobbly,” AP wrote.  

Hockey Player Sidney Crosby’s Post-Concussion Comeback Is Short-Lived

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Posted on 13th December 2011 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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Last month we blogged about the return to the ice of Penguins hockey star Sidney Crosby, who was benched for almost 10 months after sustaining a concussion in January.

The New York Times wrote that Crosby’s comeback would be one of the most-watched concussion cases ever, as we pointed out in our Nov. 25 posting.

 http://www.tbilaw.com/blog/2011/11/hockey-player-sidney-crosby-returns-to-ice-after-10-month-hiatus-after-concussions.html

Well, Crosby’s comeback was short-lived. His case will perhaps finally hammer home to the knuckleheads at the top of the National Hockey League how dangerous and cumulative the effects of concussions are.  

On Monday, in a story carried in the national media, Crosby went back to the bench, indefinitely. He told sports writers that he was getting the symptoms of a concussion again, and was off the ice for an unspecified period. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/sports/hockey/sidney-crosby-out-indefinitely-as-concussion-symptoms-return.html?ref=todayspaper

According to The Times, Crosby took a hit in the head in a Dec. 5 game against the Boston Bruins. Later that same game, he ran into one of his teammates. Crosby didn’t feel well and skipped playing in two games.

Last week Crosby underwent a concussion test, and there weren’t any signs of one. Nonetheless, this past weekend he was getting concussion symptoms, such as headaches, while he was doing a workout.

He’s smart to go back on hiatus until his brain fully heals.      

Soccer Players Who Frequently ‘Head’ Ball Sustain Mild Brain Injury

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Posted on 4th December 2011 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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Football and ice hockey aren’t the only sports that are causing long-term brain damage in athletes. Soccer is, too.

That was the finding of a study done Dr. Michael Lipton of New York City’s Montefiore Medical Center, a researcher who presented the results of his work to the Radiological Society of North America late last month.

BBC News reported on Lipton’s comments, which included, “Heading a soccer ball is not an impact of magnitude that will lacerate nerve fibers in the brain. But repetitive heading could set off  a cascade of responses that can lead to degeneration of brain cells.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15917035

In his test Lipton did brain scans on 32 amateur soccer players who frequently “headed” the ball. The bottom line was that there was no damage to the brains of players who hit the ball with their heads 1,000 times or less a year. But when there were more head hits than that, Lipton found “patterns of damage similar to that seen in patients with concussions,” BBC News reported.

To non-soccer players, hitting a ball with your head 1,000 times a year may appear to be a big number, but “it amounts to a few times a day for a regular player, say the researchers,” BBC News reported.

Obviously, Lipton’s study didn’t involve a large sample of players, and some are saying that much more research must be done to confirm his findings.

But anecdotally, there is at least one death that’s been blamed on “heading.” British soccer player Jeff Astle died in 2002, at age 59, after having cognitive issues. ”The coroner ruled that his death resulted from a degenerative brain disease caused by heading heavy leather footballs,” BBC News  reported. 

Soccer balls are not as heavy now as they were back in the day when Astle was playing, but they can move at speeds ranging from roughly 30 mph to 60 mph an hour.

In Lipton’s research, he used diffusion tensor imaging, which shows brain tissues and nerves. The test volunteers told researchers how many times they had headed the ball, and those who had done it often showed mild traumatic brain injuries in their scans, according to BBC News.

Lipton’s scans found that several areas of the brain were injured by repeated heading, including the front of the organ and the back of it near the skull. These parts of the mind govern ”attention, memory, executive functioning and higher-order visual functions,” BBC News reported.

The test volunteers who frequently headed the ball also didn’t perform as well on tests that measure verbal memory and reaction times.     

There are skeptics about Lipton’s findings. One claims the soccer players are suffering mild brain injury because they are slamming their heads with other players when they head the ball, not from heading the ball per se.

No matter how you slice it, soccer players are suffering brain injuries, and measures should be taken to protect them.

Veterans Affairs Lagging In Treating Vets With PTSD From Combat In Iraq, Afghanistan

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Posted on 3rd December 2011 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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Veterans who are now suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after tours in Iraq and Afghanistan are not getting prompt help or treatment from the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to testimony at a Senate committee hearing last week.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/story/2011-11-30/veterans-PTSD-health-care/51515992/1

 USA Today covered the proceedings before the Senate Veteran’s Affairs committee, and it was not good news for war vets. 

According to witness Michelle Washington, a PTSD-care coordinator for a VA hospital, in some cases veterans are told that it will take six week before they can get an appointment with a mental health professional. After such as long wait, some of these vets either give up on getting mental-health care or their PTSD gets much worse, Washington testified.

USA Today cited data from the non-profit Wounded Warrior Project, which found that  40 percent of the 600 Iraq-Afghanistan veterans it surveyed had difficulty getting help from the VA. And of those, 40 percent never got any therapy, according to USA Today.

The VA’s goal is to treat patients by 14 days or less. But USA Today analyzed data, which “showed that new mental health patients at about a third of department hospitals wait longer than the VA’s goal of treating patients within 14 days or less,” according to the newspaper.

Washington was a whistle-blower of sorts. She is the first VA employee, and had authorization from her union, to talk frankly about the problems her agency has handling the overlaod of vets with PTSD. There is a lot of pressure for VA employees to hit the 14-day deadline, and therapists are not being given the time to treat vets who need contining counseling, USA Today quoted Washington as saying.

There will be issues “as long as scheduling continues to be driven by clerks pressured by management to make the numbers look good,” according to Washington.

Meanwhile, a VA mental health official wouldn’t even acknowledge that the agency was having trouble serving the needs of vets.

Let’s hope the Senate committee does something about this issue.  

 

 

        

 

Pittsburgh Steelers Troy Polamalu’s Recent Symptoms Sound Like Concussions, Not Coincidence

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Posted on 1st December 2011 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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Are Pittsburgh Steelers’ officials deluding themselves, or are they just plain stupid and reckless, in their cavalier attitude about the two recent head injuries that player Troy Polamalu sustained?

Sports writer Mike Bires of the Beaver County Times did a nice job of outlining the disturbing way that the Steelers organization is treating Polamalu. 

 http://www.timesonline.com/sports/steelers/bires-polamalu-s-concussions-a-growing-concern/article_6ea8f126-3465-56e4-b880-f43761424e9f.html

Within the past six weeks Polamalu, who has sustained multiple concussions since high school, took blows to the head twice. The Steelers said that Polamalu had been exhibiting ”concussion-like symptoms,” according to Bires.  

But team medical officials and the organization are claiming that Polamalu no longer has those symptoms, and may be ready to take the field again. Bires, and we, are pretty skeptical about that.

If it looks like a snake and moves like a snake, it’s snake. If the symptoms sound like a concussion, two times in a row within six weeks, we’d hazard to guess that it is not just a “coincidence,” which is what someone from the Steelers told a reporter, according to Bires. It sounds like concussions, not coincidence.

On Oct. 16, Polamalu took a bad it to the head and was benched. He called his wife to say he was OK, Bires reported. But just a week later, Polamalu was back playing.

People seem to be taking Polamalu’s future health very lightly. It’s common knowledge that the effect of concussions on the brain is cumulative, and it is damaging. And Polamalu has had a frightening number of concussions, seven, already from high school to present, according to Bires.

And that is not counting the past two hits that sound a lot like concussions to us. Polamalu still has to undergo more concussion tests this week before he is cleared to play, so we’ll see what happens.

Bire’s summed up Polamalu’s situation pretty well in his story, talking about the 30-year-old player’s two toddler sons, his $10.5 million bonus for signing a new deal this fall and his $6.4 million base salary.

“Considering his history with concussions and these two ‘concussion-like’ injuries the past six weeks, you have to wonder if he’ll still be playing in 2014, the last year of his existing contract,” Bires wrote. “Most importantly, Polamalu can only hope that these latest ‘concussion-like’ head blows don’t lead to anything more serious in the future.”

Don’t bet on it.