Bringing The Concussion Discussion To The Web: Children’s Hospital Boston To Host Live Webcast On Concussions This Monday, 9/12

Back in the early 2000s when I was playing high school football, no one really talked about concussions. When you experienced a brain-smashing, helmet-to-helmet impact that made your vision blurry and your legs feel like jelly, the coach would typically tell you to “walk it off.” Have a behemoth, throbbing bump on the head? “Rub some dirt on it, you’ll be fine.”

After speaking with Dr. Mark R. Proctor, the director of the Brain Injury Center at Children’s Hospital Boston, I now know that such a “tough guy” mentality towards concussions can lead to – and has led to – serious health problems and even death. “There’s an epidemic of concussions,” Dr. Proctor told me, “and it affects a lot of people… a lot of student athletes as well as athletes at the collegiate and professional levels.”

To help educate people about this concussion epidemic, Dr. Proctor is leading an interactive webcast from Children’s Hospital Boston titled, “Tackling Concussions Head On.” Topics for discussion will include preventing concussions, diagnosing concussions, treating concussions and the new laws in Massachusetts pertaining to concussions.

According to Dr. Proctor, the greatest misconception people have about concussions is that in order to suffer a concussion a person must be hit hard enough to be knocked unconscious. This is not the case. “There are a lot of myths about what concussions are and what the treatments are,” Dr. Proctor told me. “Over 90% of concussion victims stay conscious.”

With most concussions, the only treatment needed is to rest and let the body recover. However, if you fail to recognize a concussion and you receive a consecutive blow to the head, the results can be fatal. This type of concussion-related fatality, as Dr. Proctor mentioned, in known as second impact syndrome. Long-term effects of concussions can also be severe. “Repetitive mild injuries can cause very significant problems,” Dr. Proctor said. These problems include depression, dementia and decreased brain function.

Dr. Proctor is encouraging physicians, teenage athletes, parents, trainers and coaches to tune in for the webcast, which will be begin at 6 p.m. on Monday, September 12^th. Participants will be able to submit questions to a panel of medical professionals during the online event. For more information and to sign up for a reminder e-mail for the webcast, go to: http://www.orlive.com/childrenshospitalboston/videos/concussions

See below for a full list of “Tackling Concussions Head On” presenters:

• Mark R. Proctor, MD, Director, Brain Injury Center
• David Mooney, MD, MPH, Director, Trauma Program
• William Meehan, MD, Director, Sports Concussion Clinic
• Alex McLean Taylor, PsyD, Children’s Neuropsychology Program
• Steve Clark, MS, LATC, CSCS, Assistant Athletic Trainer, Dept. of Sports Medicine and Performance, Northeastern University
• Karameh Hawash, MD, Children’s Department of Neurology
• P. Ellen Grant, MD, Director, Fetal-Neonatal Neuroimaging and Developmental Science Center
• Alexander Rotenberg, MD, PhD, Children’s Department of Neurology

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Posted by erik devaney on Sep 8 2011. Filed under Featured - For home page featured article, Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry