Upon receiving my latest Hockey News magazine today, and actually having some time to read it, I came across an article talking about a new way concussions could possibly be prevented. It seems every team has been hit with the concussion curse in some way or another this season and the Pens are a major one, so the league should be looking into various ways concussions can be prevented. That includes the way the game is played with some hits as well as certain measures the players can take to protect themselves as well. An article by Ken Campbell takes a look into a new invention that may help to lessen the chance of a concussion.
One of the biggest topics this year around the league has been about concussions. They have been on a rise it seems lately and when one of the league's best players misses nearly a year of action due to a concussion, you better believe they'll be looking into ways to limit or prevent concussions.
There has been discussion about helmets with extra padding in them to help reduce concussions, but when a concussion is caused by the brain moving around in your head, unless that padding is inside the skull, there's not much that padding in the helmet can do to prevent a concussion. That is why several researchers started looking into ways to help blood flow to the skull and keep brain movement to a minimum. They came up with a collar.
"This collar pinches off the outlet vein that directs blood out of the brain, which would allow the inlet vein to fill up the extra space with blood, which would give the brain less room to slosh around" (Ken Campbell).
This collar could be designed on the current neck guard used in the NHL. While this product is still far off from being used, it does show promise in some tests. When testing using a design of the collar on rats, the results showed that the rats with the collar were 85% less likely to suffer an injury rather than the rats without a collar.
The collar may be a little tight, but if we ask the players who have missed a lengthy time of playing due to a concussion if they would have minded wearing a tighter collar if it meant that their concussion may not have happened, I believe a lot of them would not have cared that their collar was a tad tighter.
With further testing, I hope that this product continues to show great results and can one day be marketed and worn. Once that's done though, can someone create a time machine to have it complete and ready before January 1st of 2011 and make sure that Sidney Crosby wears it? I would really like to see what that season would turn out like for him, he was putting up some great numbers!
Researchers: Dr. Joseph Fisher - University of Toronto; Dr. David Smith - University of West Virginia; Dr. Julian Bailes - brain injuries expert with the NFL Players' Association.
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