National concussion guidelines
The average Canadian suffering a concussion at the rink or on the football field will not receive the same level of treatment as hockey star Sidney Crosby or retired CFL player Jon Cornish.
But the federal government took a major step last week toward improving care for average folks by announcing a $1.4-million investment to develop national guidelines for the management of concussions in amateur sport.
Doctors say a formal concussion strategy is every bit as important as a helmet. Studies show concussions are three to six times more likely to be detected in an environment with a protocol in place. And the concussions that cause the most damage tend to follow the ones that go undetected when the brain isn’t given the proper time to heal and rest.
“Right now, there’s actually no common approach in Canada to address concussions,” Sport Minister Carla Qualtrough told Postmedia on Monday. “We see them in many settings — schools, soccer fields, recreation and hockey rinks. We really want to make sure this serious public health issue is addressed comprehensively and consistently across the country.”
Concussion protocols in Canada vary wildly from sport to sport and even from one side of a city to another.
“We needed to show leadership at the federal level so we can galvanize all the really good work that’s being done in pockets and build a comprehensive strategy,” said Qualtrough, who is working with Health Minister Jane Philpott on the matter.
According to the federal government, 64 per cent of emergency visits among 10- to 18-yearolds in Canada are related to participation in sports, physical activity and recreation. Between 2004 and 2014, the number of reported head injuries (relative to other injuries) among children playing sports increased by more than 40 per cent.
“What we really need to work on is consistent approaches to care,” said Gordon Stringer, whose daughter Rowan died in 2013 from second-impact syndrome after suffering multiple concussions playing rugby. “Guidelines are a good start.”
The injury-prevention charity Parachute is tasked with leading the development of harmonized concussion protocols through an advisory committee that includes doctors, teachers and coaches.
The guidelines will be derived from the latest research to come out of the fifth International Consensus Conference on Concussion taking place this week in Berlin.
“We need to make sure everybody is on the same page so parents don’t get one message from the hockey coach and the other message from the soccer coach,” said Dr. Charles Tator, a neurosurgeon at the Krembil Neuroscience Centre of Toronto Western Hospital and co-chair of the Parachute advisory committee.
“In order to diagnose concussions, you really need an army of people who are knowledgeable — the coach, the athlete, and the players themselves.”
Qualtrough advises parents to only enrol their children in sporting activities with an established concussion protocol in place.
“If I sprain my ankle, you don’t put me back out in the hockey arena,” she said. “If I sprain my brain, you shouldn’t put me back either. We need to be very clear that a concussion is a brain injury. There are ways we can minimize this injury. There are ways we can treat it.
“But we need to acknowledge this is a serious injury that you can’t tough through.”