University of North Carolina and Boston University School of Medicine Studies
Bob Simon, a 60 Minutes correspondent, reported the following on October 11, 2009:
As many as three million sports related concussions happen every year. And new research shows that their effects can be
frighteningly long-lasting, even leading to permanent brain damage and the early onset of dementia. While concussions happen in
many sports, most happen in football. They can happen to kids, to the pros….
Dr. Robert Cantu, a neurosurgeon, co-authored a University of North Carolina study of retired NFL players and found a correlation
between the number of concussions and the onset of dementia and depression. "The impacts [football collisions] can be
tremendous, because athletes can run almost 20 miles an hour, and their size and their weight would be equivalent to crashing a car
into a brick wall going 40, 45 miles an hour," Cantu explained.
Dr. Ann McKee, a neuropathologist at Boston University School of Medicine, has been working on a brand new area of research on
the brain that has provided physiological proof of brain disease in athletes who have suffered concussions.
Dr. McKee says “slides, …, show… devastating, degenerative brain disease, called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. It
was first seen in boxers and can only be diagnosed after death, when the brain is dissected. Even more troubling, she says, CTE
actually progresses undetected for years, silently eating away at brain cells, until it causes dementia and other cognitive problems. "It
seems to be triggered by trauma that occurs in a person's youth; their teens, their 20s, even their 30s. But it doesn't show up for
decades later," she explained.
Dr. Cantu is even more worried about kids and concussions. Last year (2008), high school athletes reported having 150,000
concussions. Younger brains are more vulnerable to injury, doctors say, and unlike in the NFL, there's often no one on the sidelines
trained to diagnose brain injuries. Another source estimates that there are 250,000 concussions each year for players on all levels.
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| Concussion, CTE, and Impact Injury Studies and Statistics |
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