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General Concussion thread

Bruce_ma gooshvili

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Given that each week there seems to be a new story on concussion issues I thought a general thread might be appropriate for posts on research etc. More bad PR for rugby in terms of concussion with suggestions it is far worse for kids than some other contact sports, and that girls are particularly succeptible. Calls to ban tackling at school.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-41386706
 
This hack pops up waving another hack study on an annual basis. Pretty sure it was discussed here on the last occasion. It only ever screams for an outright ban, rather than better education on how to tackle safely.

It hasn't generally gained much traction but I guess they're hoping for a sympathetic education secretary to be appointed sometime
 
CBA but guess it is Pollock again?

Every year she says ban rugby/tackling has done for the last 5 years.

It's just to justify spending research money.
 
CBA but guess it is Pollock again?

Every year she says ban rugby/tackling has done for the last 5 years.

It's just to justify spending research money.
My guess too - we discuss it most years.

Equally, the problem with general concussion threads is finding them again next time we want it - I always try to find the most recently available one; but can't always find it.
 
It's Pollock. WR have pointed out that this time around the study has mixed data from the 9-12 age group with the 18-20 age group.
 
Would pay as much attention to what this cretin says as I would to promises of a good time on the wall of a toilet stall. There's no 'new evidence' and whatever about being a useless hack, I resent the suggestion that kids shouldn't be tackling because it's dangerous for kids to not learn how to safely tackle when they're small and then do it wrongly when they're big enough to properly damage each other.
 
LOL just came across this video and now I know what you guys are on about...



This silly ***** is so deluded....... does anyone in the UK actually take her seriously???
If she came on national TV in NZ and spurted this rubbish everyone would laugh at her...
 
She comes up with the same bad conclusions from cherry-picked data every 6 months or so; and has done for the last 3-4 years.
She won't be happy until rugby has ceased to exist.

She's getting traction this time because the premiership is suffering pretty unbelieveable attrition at the moment. We should be just ignoring her like we usually do.
 
So the idea that you shouldn't learn to tackle since your adult is counter intuitive to make the game safe. But there were some ideas thrown around in some usa article that make sense to me.
Clubs should be teaching rugby not gym teachers. Having properly trained coaches is the most important thing. American football's (and American sports in general) biggest issue is that the people teaching fundamentals are just some dad who played the game in high hopes school and wants to relive his glory days coaching his kid.

I also like the idea of introducing contact in phases.
A year learning to tackle.
Introduce ruck/mail.
Introduce scrum.
 
http://www.sarugbymag.co.za/how-tough-tackle-sanctions-impact-the-game/

Article says much more, but here's a snapshot...

Screen-Shot-2018-05-08-at-12.18.05-PM-200x300.png

THE RESEARCH STUDY

World Rugby's research team, led by Tucker, studied 611 incidents that resulted in HIAs and compared them to more than 3,500 tackles that didn't cause head injuries.

The most significant discovery was that 335 HIA injuries occurred while making a tackle and 129 while being tackled.

'That was surprising and challenging from a legal perspective, because the law is almost exclusively written to protect the ball-carrier, who is on the receiving end of most instances of foul play,' says Tucker.

The research team then looked at why the tackler is 2.6 times more at risk of a head injury than the ball-carrier, with every analysed tackle scored according to 20 or so factors, including the following:

• Relative speed of players: Backline players are twice as likely to get injured while making a tackle than forwards, probably because backs tend to engage in higher speed tackles. High-speed tackles are more dangerous than medium-speed tackles, which are more dangerous than static tackles.

• Nature of the head contact in the tackle: Was it head to head, head to shoulder, head to hip, head to knee, etc? Head to head contact is six times more risky than head to hip contact. The ideal target for the tackler is between the sternum and the waist of the ball-carrier. Overall, the risk of injury is 4.3 times higher for legal tackles with higher contact (shoulder and head to head) than legal tackles with lower contact (below the shoulder).
Screen-Shot-2018-05-08-at-12.19.29-PM-300x270.png

• Body position of the ball-carrier and tackler: Were they upright, bent at the waist or diving/falling? As either of the players can be in one of three positions, there are nine possible combinations. The most injuries occur when both players are upright. The lowest risk for the ball-carrier is when he is bent at the waist, no matter what the tackler does. For the tackler, the risk is lowest when diving and highest when upright. 'The key message here was that an upright tackler is the situation we want to avoid, because it is higher risk and happens quite often,' says Tucker. 'The safest tackle is one where the tackler is bent at the waist or diving.'

• Type of tackle: Was it an active or passive shoulder or a smother tackle? The research team then produced a spectrum of risk, and worked out which type of tackles were more and less likely to cause a head injury. 'Once we knew that, we could look at substituting high-risk tackles with low-risk tackles,' says Tucker. 'One way to eliminate high-risk tackles would be to ban tackling, but obviously that's not an option. That would be like banning cars to prevent car accidents. Instead, we wanted to look at ways to shift behaviour away from high risk towards low risk. That meant, for instance, getting tacklers lower and bent at the waist, lowering the speed of the tackle, or having fewer front- on tackles. Of course, some of these are feasible, others are not, and our challenge was to identify where a difference could realistically be made. That's where the expert multidisciplinary working group came in.'
Screen-Shot-2018-05-08-at-12.19.20-PM-1-400x240.png
 
More research publishes by the British Medical Journal. News report doesn't explicitly mention concussion but it seems highly relevant.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-46193609
Is there not a link between wearing headgear and putting your head in more dangerous positions though? I thought I remembered that from a study a few years ago. I noticed that that article only measured severity of impact rather than frequency of damaging impacts?
 
After spending the last week in hospital with a head injury, and concussion I just wish I'd always worn headgear when playing. And mine wasn't to serious but I didn't know my name for a week....

Wearing headgear wouldn't make me tackle harder, but it might of saved my bonce more.... No more rugby for me :(
 
Is there not a link between wearing headgear and putting your head in more dangerous positions though? I thought I remembered that from a study a few years ago. I noticed that that article only measured severity of impact rather than frequency of damaging impacts?
Correct - not much evidence for scrum caps specifically; but plenty for just about every other risky activity undertaken by human beings.
After spending the last week in hospital with a head injury, and concussion I just wish I'd always worn headgear when playing. And mine wasn't to serious but I didn't know my name for a week....

Wearing headgear wouldn't make me tackle harder, but it might of saved my bonce more.... No more rugby for me :(
Well... it would have made you more likely to take risks with your head - unless you are unique in human history. We now have 1 study that suggests scrum caps can reduce impact to the outside of the skull. We still have 0 studies showing that they reduce incidence of mTBI (which happens inside the sull, not outside) - whilst we DO still have a fair few saying that they make no difference whatsoever.

According to science; if you had your wish, you'd have been MORE likely to suffer concussion than if you made the choices that you did; whilst there's no evidence either way that the concussion you did suffer would have been milder, or more severe, had you been wearing a scrum cap.

ETA: You would, most likely, have suffered significantly fewer bruises, cuts, grazes etc to your head, with consequently less scar tissue such as cauliflower ears etc.
 
BBC complaints: https://ssl.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms/?lang=en&reset=&uid=271403173

"This article is based on undergraduate level research, that somehow won a competition to be published in the BMJ - presumably a competition based on brevity, rather than content.
Firstly, the original research (unlike the BBC article) raises the increased incidence of concussion in rugby - and then explains it (increased awareness).
Secondly, the original research points out that only 1 previous research article has shown a positive impact on concussion rates by the wearing of rugby headguards - it acknowledges that it's conclusions fly in the face of current knowledge base.
Thirdly, the original research points out that the testing the rugby headguards underwent appears to be irrelevant for discussions of concussion; even though they went and did so anyway.
Fourthly, the original research quotes another paper (doi: 10.1249/MSS.0b013e3181864bee) as saying that wearing a headguard reduces the severity of concussive symptoms - please note; the quoted paper says no such thing; though it does say "headgear did not reduce the severity of head injury or concussion significantly."

Please note, that everything we currently know about the use of scrum caps / helmets is that yes, they can result in a reduction of force extracranially - which means that they can help prevent bruising, cuts and abrasions; but make no difference on intracranial injury, like concussion - this conclusion is not fully settled, but it is suggested by the weight of literature.

This research reads not so much as an academic exercise; as a plea for funding from manufacturers of rugby headguards. It makes claims that are not suported by the data (which is confirmation bias), and claims for other studies that the studies themselves do not (which is simply dishonesty).
It does, however to serve as clickbait fearmongering; and its most likely effect is increased sales of rugby headguards, increased risk-taking by young rugby players; and possibly a subsequent increase in concussive injuries."
 
I've also written this on my local club's facebook group:
"Just a word of warning - especially for parents.
There's a new (and terrible) piece of student research on scrum caps that has been gathering press (I've seen it covered by both Sky and BBC).

It is claiming that scrum caps can reduce head impacts, and concussions by up to 50%; it is confirmation bias and fear-mongering in order to sell scrum caps (and beg for research grants from Canterbury).

The research itself admits that almost all the current reseach is that scrum caps make no difference to concussion rates; they also admit that they're measuring about the worst possible metric to say anything about concussion.

This research does not change our knowledge base on the use of scrum caps - they are good at reducing bruising, cuts and abrasions; they only difference they make on concussion is to increase risk-taking behaviours suc as poor tackle technique; and actually slightly increase the rates of concussion.

The best advice is still available here: https://www.englandrugby.com/mm/Doc...bySafeEssentialGuide)May2017FINAL_Neutral.pdf"
 
Interesting Grauniad article hung on Lambie's recent concussion based retirement. Goes off into broader issues, but worth the read. Hard to argue with any of it.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/jan/24/rugby-union-obsession-bulk-speed-skill-pat-lambie

Meh, This isn't new or rocket science. Since the dawn of the professional era of the sport, size, speed, ability all had their pro's and con's. But this article forgets about guys like Faf de Klerk and Cheslin Kolbe who on numerous occasions upstage guys twice their size and weight. And they haven't been victims of of being bulldozed or even going off for concussion as much as bigger guys.

What started Lambie's curse, was a totally illegal and heinous act. And should rather be compared to a flying knee in MMA than many other contact situations in rugby.
 
Stumbled across this this afternoon, Shane Williams documentary on concussion. I haven't watched yet, but intend to in the next couple of days.

Thank you, I'll watch it. I had a concussion playing American football in High School (late 70's). But back then they took me out for one play and sent me right back in the game. o_O
 
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