More focus, but the headache persists
● Barely a week after Pat Lambie became the latest rugby player to prematurely halt his career as a result of concussion, the sport put this issue front of mind in a groundbreaking workshop in Cape Town.
After failing to shake the side effects of a series of head knocks the 28-year-old Lambie last week pulled the plug on a career that had always been rich with promise and in some ways was yet to climax.
Lambie follows a long list of internationals who have had to cut their careers short as a result of concussion over the past decade. All Blacks Jason Eaton, Steve Devine, Ben Afeaki, Leon MacDonald, James Broadhurst, Springbok lock Alistair Hargreaves, Ireland’s Nathan White, Kevin McLaughlin, Declan Fitzpatrick, Bernard Jackman, Dominic Ryan and John Fogarty, as well as Wales’s Jonathan Thomas, England’s Mouritz Botha, Andy Hazell, Michael Lipman, Kat Merchant and Shontayne Hape have all had to yield to concussion.
The Chiefs’ Craig Clarke (he was concussed 10 times in 22 months), Hurricanes prop Reggie Goodes and Crusaders flyhalf Daniel Bowden also quit prematurely, while rugby luminaries like Jonny Sexton, Ben Smith, George North and Leigh Halfpenny have all in the last year had to take time out as a result of concussion symptoms.
While rugby has introduced measures to prevent, identify and manage concussion, the condition remains poorly understood. Medical science has made some significant advances but much of the scourge remains unexplored. For example, no complete diagnostic test exists to identify concussion.
This week, however, for the first time under one roof, national, franchise and provincial medical professionals, as well as health insurers, debated the best way forward.
The upshot of the one-day workshop is that a more proactive approach would be adopted in treating concussion.
“Rather than have a sit-back-and-rest approach, we’d introduce certain physiotherapy-guided rehabilitation exercises that will accelerate the recovery,” said Jon Patricios, a global expert in the field.
“One addresses balance that stimulates the system that aligns the function of the eyes, ears and the area of the brain responsible for interpreting your position in space.
“The other involves exercise on the treadmill. It is training that is sub-symptom threshold.”
Lambie hauntingly explained how some of those symptoms had dogged him.
Apart from the medical professionals being updated about the latest protocols at the workshop, the health insurance fraternity needed a clearer picture about an affliction cloaked in fuzziness.
It is of course all too late for Lambie and many others. Rugby has increasingly become a high-impact sport in which bodies are conditioned to absorb clashes. No wonder one of the latest recommendations in the prevention of concussion is to strengthen neck muscles.
And though the game has done much to prevent concussion by amending the laws, its application by referees and TMOs remains inconsistent. We need only refer to last November’s internationals.