Researchers put the collar on concussions.
New device, acting a little like bubble wrap, could prevent brain from crashing into skull
NEW YORK— In the days since concussions emerged as a confounding epidemic, the search has been on for a silver-bullet solution to prevent this sporting world plague.
There’ve been high-priced helmets, among a variety of products, sold alongside claims of concussion reduction. But so far, there has been no compelling science to prove any of them work. The problem is that while helmets are excellent at staving off injuries to the outside of the head, experts believe concussions happen inside it, when the brain, sloshing about in a bath of fluid, crashes into the skull and suffers damage.
Which is why Tuesday’s unveiling of another piece of equipment touted as a possible concussion reducer stood out as altogether different. The device — a sleek black collar about an inch thick that’s worn around the neck — attacks the concussion quandary from the inside. By pressing gently on the jugular veins, around the spot where you can take your pulse, the collar reduces blood flow out of the head, which in turn increases the volume of fluid between the brain and the skull. In doing so, the theory goes, it creates a more substantial barrier between delicate grey matter and possible damage.
It’s like wrapping a layer of natural bubble wrap around the brain. And if it works as its designers hope — and trials in humans are underway — it could amount to a significant breakthrough in the battle against brain injury.
Dr. Julian Bailes, the concussion expert who is among the collar’s developers, said that in lab testing on animals exposed to experimental concussions, researchers found an 83 per cent reduction in damage to brain fibres in collared test subjects compared with their uncollared counterparts.
Dr. Charles Tator, the Toronto brain surgeon who is among the pioneers in brain-injury treatment and research and is not affiliated with the development of the product, said in a video address that, after studying the preliminary research, he is “impressed” with what he called “an ingenious device.”
“You take up the space inside the head so that the brain can’t jiggle as much,” Tator said.
The idea for the product, about five years in development and recently purchased by the Performance Sports Group, the parent company of Bauer Hockey, was born in part out of an observation of existing data that noted athletes who play football at altitude in NFL and high school games are as much as 30 per cent less likely to suffer a concussion than athletes who play at sea level.
The thinking goes that because fluid volume inside the head is increased at altitude, the brain is has a thicker cushion that reduces the slosh effect. The collar, made of a mix of silicon and urethane surrounding a piece of stainless steel with a shape memory, aims at reproducing that effect at any elevation.
While concussion experts pointed out that more research needs to be done to determine the collar’s effectiveness and safety, its introduction in a Times Square amphitheatre was met with optimism.
“This is not a silver-bullet solution — there are none — but this is a promising area. It’s something we should keep exploring,” said Dr. Neilank Jha, the Woodbridge-based brain surgeon who is among the world leaders in the field and also unaffiliated with the developers.
Brain injuries remain a top-ofmind issue in the sports world, where big-money concussion lawsuits have been winding their way through the courts for years. Those legal actions, along with mental illness and suicide and on-field death linked to repetitive head trauma, have led many to question the future viability of collision sports like football and hockey.
Kevin Davis, CEO of the Performance Sports Group, said that if all goes well, the collar is “a year or two” away from going to market. Bailes, a key figure in the research that first linked football to brain damage and who will be played by Alec Baldwin in the upcoming Hollywood movie Concussion, said he hopes it’s available sooner.
“We’ve had seven kids die playing high school football (in the U.S.) this year, and what are we doing about it?” Bailes said. “Helmets aren’t helping.”
Dr. Gregory Myer, an independent researcher who has received funding from the collar’s backers, pointed out the brain has a helmet — “it’s called the skull.” He said the data he’s seen so far, both from animal testing and trials on 14 high-school hockey players and 32 high-school football players, suggest the collar is safe and doesn’t have a negative effect on athletic performance.
“We’ve got a lot more work to do,” he said.
Attendees of Tuesday’s unveiling were invited to try on the device. After having my neck measured — there were at least nine different sizes on hand — I wore the collar for about five minutes. It fit tight, like wearing a tie, but one assumes Don Cherry goes to work on Saturday nights in neckwear that’s more constrictive. At first, I felt the throb of my pulse and a momentary burst of pressure in my head, like a sinus headache. A gentleman beside me, also trying on the device, said he felt for a moment like he was choking, but that the feeling soon subsided.
Myer, in dealing with the highschool kids who’ve used the device, said he’s known a few who declined to wear it because they’re ticklish on their necks. The majority he has observed, he said, say it’s something you get used to wearing quickly. Certainly that was my experience. The sinus pressure subsided in 15 seconds or so. After a couple of minutes the collar felt neither bad nor good — it was simply there.
Its developers point out that the pressure it exerts is gentle. The backflow of blood amounts to a volume of three to five cubic centimetres, or two to three per cent of the blood contained in a typical skull —“maybe a teaspooon,” Bailes said. An equivalent change in pressure occurs when you lie down or yawn.
“There’s a lot of upside with very little downside,” Jha said.
Tator spoke of the importance of continuing the search for a way to make the games, loved by so many and now under scrutiny for good reasons, safer.
“We don’t want to turn people away from fantastic sports like hockey and football,” Tator said. “Let’s keep our kids active.”