Brain Injury Lawyer - New York

Sports Equipment Cannot Prevent Concussions

Unfortunately there are many dubious claims made by sports equipment companies on the beneficial effects that their devices have on preventing or reducing the effects of a concussion.

Last week, experts testifying at a Senate committee hearing on concussion and the marketing of sports equipment said that there is no such thing as concussion-proof helmets, mouth guards or head bands.

"The potential harm that I see being caused by products that claim to prevent concussion when they do not is far more than simply the financial harm of paying more for something that isn't likely to work as claimed," said Jeffrey S. Kutcher of the neurology department at the University of Michigan. "The public deserves to know that equipment has a significant, but inherently limited, ability to prevent concussions."

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W. Va.), chair of the Senate committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, said in his opening remarks that "any company that claims" its products "will protect young athletes from concussions is making an empty,

Senator Udall who has repeatedly questioned the safety claims made by football helmet manufacturers  has called for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate safety claims made by these equipment companies.  He has introduced legislation that would make it a crime to sell sporting equipment that makes false or misleading claims about product safety.

"No sports equipment can prevent all concussions," Udall said, "despite any advertising claims to the contrary."

Let's promote safe driving for your nation's youth.

Motor vehicle accidents are a leading cause of traumatic brain injury in young adults. 

National Teen Driver Safety Week is an annual observation which takes place October 16-22. This year’s theme is to support parents in teaching their teens to drive. According to new research from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), 87 percent of teens report having a parent involved in learning to drive, and four of 10 teens report being taught only by a parent. Other recent CHOP research suggests that although parents can identify the basic concepts teen drivers need to learn (such as parking), they tend not to mention the more advanced skills proven to reduce teen crashes, such as scanning for hazards.

Driving Experience Is Necessary. For their safety, teens must log plenty of time behind the wheel to gain driving experience. In New York, junior permit holders are required to log at least 50 hours of supervised driving – with at least 15 of these hours after sunset – before taking a test to obtain a driver’s license. In addition, teens must have a junior permit for at least six months before a junior or senior license is issued.

Parenting Style Matters for Teen Driving Safety. According to CHOP, teens who say their parents set rules and pay attention to their activities in a helpful, supportive way are half as likely to be in a crash.

Parent/Teen Driving Agreements. Parents of junior licensed teen drivers are advised to use a parent/teen driving agreement to set clear rules, boundaries and expectations about driving behaviors. Teens should be aware that motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of deaths for teens and that rules are in place to keep them safe, not control them. New privileges can be introduced as driving skills improve and teens exhibit responsible driving. For more parenting tips on teen driving safety, click here. For samples of parent/teen driving agreements or contracts click here .

Want More Information? Traffic safety educational materials and driving management tools for parents of teen drivers provide guidance on teaching teens to be safe drivers and can help manage newly licensed teens’ driving. Parents and teens are encouraged to read and complete the NYS Department of Motor Vehicles’ “Parents Guide to Teen Driving” by clicking here  Parents and teens should also read, understand and comply with the NYS Graduated Drivers Licensing Law, available by clicking here.

For additional teen driving safety information, click here or here.

Free Webinar on Concussions

There will be a free webinar, "From Concussion to Consequence," on October 18th designed to address our current knowledge about managing concussions, particularly in the area of sports and the effects that a concussion can have on an individual's life. 

The 60 minute presentation will feature medical experts from the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine, a member of the NFL Head, Neck and Spine Committee and the editor in chief of the Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation.

The seminar is sponsored by medical publishers, Ovid and Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins in partnership with the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine.

For more information and to register click here.

New brain injury video series

A new on line video series, Understanding Brain Injury"has been produced by the Shepherd Brain Injury Center to assist in educating patients and family members about brain injury.

The videos use simple language to discuss brain injuries and include interviews with medical experts, brain injury survivors and family members.  Lee Woodruff whose husband, ABC News Anchor, Bob Woodruff sustained a traumatic brain injury in a bomb blast in Iraq adds her practical advice.

The video is in five chapters and each is easily down loadable.  The first Chapter is an introduction to brain damage, chapter 2 is Brain Injury Basics and Anatomy, Chapter 3 is Understanding Traumatic Brain Injury, its Causes, Effects and Classifications, Chapter 4 is Understanding Non-traumatic Brain Injury and Stroke, its Causes, Effects and Classifications and Chapter 5 contains practical advice on coping with traumatic brain injury.

The videos can be viewed by clicking here.

Interview tomorrow with New York Governor Paterson on traumatic brain injury legislation and the new CDC sports concussion statistics

Join me tomorrow, Monday October 10^th at 4:40 PM when I will be interviewed by former New York Governor David Paterson on WOR 710 AM. You can listen live by clicking here . We will be discussing my opinions on the recently signed New York State concussion legislation and similar legislation passed in other states.

We need to go further to protect the health and safety of our nation’s youth.  Sports concussion legislation must include meaningful restrictions on when an athlete can return to play; requirements for baseline testing and retesting after an injury and before an athlete is cleared to return to play; return to play decisions by qualified professionals; insurance for the rehabilitation of those athletes who have sustained cognitive brain damage; an educational component that restricts and monitors the class room activities of children when they return to school; and an educational component that provides meaningful information on concussions to students, parents, teachers and coaches.

We will also be discussing the alarming statistics released last week by the Centers for Disease Control on the 250,000 reported sports related concussions in emergency room visits for the year 2009 and the implications for sports concussion management.  It is important to note that this statistic does not cover the athletes who never seek emergency room treatment.  The CDC extrapolates that the rate of concussions for all student athletes exceeds over 1 million individual’s each year!     

New web site to assist service members with traumatic brain injury launched

A new website designed to assist service members who have sustained a traumatic brain injury has been launched by my friends at BrainLine where my law partner, Shana De Caro and myself serve as legal consultants on the legal aspects of traumatic brain injury in their ask the expert section.

The new website provides military-specific information and resources on traumatic brain injury from interviews with medical experts about diagnosis and treatment for TBI and PTSD to personal stories by service members or veterans who have learned from having their own brain injury.  The web site is called BrainLineMilitary.

New standards needed for reconditioned football helmets

United States Senator Tom Udall in a guest editorial in yesterday’s USA Today, “Tackle the concussion epidemic” points out the dangers faced by our nation’s youth who are using reconditioned football helmets. 

The current “standard,” if you can even call them standards for reconditioning football helmets leaves a lot to be desired.  There are no rules on the number of times that a helmet can be reconditioned, the re-certification standards and replacement with safer equipment. According to Udall, about 100,000 helmets being used today by high school and younger players are more than 10 years old.  

Udall points out in his editorial that, “although football helmet safety has improved since the days of leather helmets, today's voluntary football helmet safety standards don't take our modern understanding of concussion risks into account. For example, the industry standard primarily protects against serious injury from a severe, direct blow — but it does not address the risk of a concussion caused by less severe impacts, or by hits that spin the head and brain.”

He has introduced the Children's Sports Athletic Equipment Safety Act. This bipartisan legislation, which has been endorsed by the National Football League Players Association, would help ensure that new and reconditioned football helmets for high school and younger players meet safety standards that specifically address concussion risk and the needs of young athletes. The bill also increases potential penalties for using false injury prevention claims to sell helmets or any other children's sports equipment.

New CDC Traumatic Brain Injury Data on Sporting Accidents and TBI

New statistics released by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) show an alarming rate of traumatic brain injury in our nation’s youth.

According to the CDC report, traumatic brain injuries as a result of athletic activities in children climbed by 60 percent in the last decade soared from 153,375 in 2001 to 248,418 in 2010, with young men injured playing football or biking accounting for most of the emergency room visits.  The CDC attributes the increase over the last decade to better reporting of TBI, but this still is not the full picture since most injuries still go unreported.  The data only captures emergency room visits.

The sports that caused the most injuries included riding bikes, football, playground activities, basketball and soccer, the CDC said.

Young men accounted for 71 percent of TBI-related emergency room visits.

Children between the ages of 10 and 19 years old accounted for more than 70 percent of all hospital trips, it said.

Boys were most often injured playing football and bicycling, while young women were hurt more often playing soccer, basketball or bike riding, the report said.

Those under the age of nine were more likely to be hurt on the playground or while riding a bike.

The CDC also stated that although TBI symptoms may appear mild at the onset, this type of injury could cause life-long impairment,, affecting memory, behavior, learning and emotions.

Chronic brain damage found in brain of Buffalo hockey, all star, Rick Martin

Former Buffalo Sabres all-star hockey player has been found to have traumatic brain damage in a study of his brain performed by researchers at Boston University in association with the Sports Concussion Institute.

The findings of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a condition known to be caused by repetitive head trauma in Rick Martin’s brain is significant because Martin was not a “fighter” on the ice and reportedly only sustained one concussion in his career.  This concussion however was severe enough to cause convulsions and a period of unconsciousness.  At the time, Martin was not wearing a helmet, although in all subsequent games he skated with a helmet.

All three former NHL players who have donated their brains for research so far have been diagnosed with CTE.

As reported in today’s Boston Globe, "Rick Martin's case shows us that even hockey players who don't engage in fighting are at risk for CTE, likely because of the repetitive brain trauma players receive throughout their career," said Chris Nowinski, a founder of the Sports Legacy Institute at BU. "We hope the decision makers at all levels of hockey consider this finding as they continue to make adjustments to hockey to make the game safer for participants."

We await the publication of a medical journal article that will provide further information on the autopsy findings.

Combined PET Scan and MRI Scan to be utilitzed by National Institute of Health to diagnose traumatic brain injury

The Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) Center for Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine (CNRM), in partnership with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center, has announced that they have recently placed into testing a whole-body simultaneous positron emission topography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) device. The device combines the capabilities of both the PET Scan and MRI technology.  It is called Biograph mMR and is designed to improve the diagnosis and treatment of military service members and civilians suffering primarily from traumatic brain injury (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

This new imaging technology was developed by Siemens Health Care.

“This scanner combines the two most powerful imaging tools,” said David Bluemke, M.D., Ph.D., director of NIH Clinical Center Radiology and Imaging Sciences. “The MRI points us to abnormalities in the body, and the PET tells us the metabolic activity of that abnormality, be it a damaged part of the brain or a tumor. This will be a major change for many patients.”

The new device makes patient care not only more streamlined, but also swifter and safer. The faster turnaround time and more comprehensive results will help diagnose patients at an earlier stage, leading to more chance of success with treatment. Additionally, traditional PET scanners combine computed tomography imaging, which uses radiation, while the new Biograph mMR does not.

The combination of these two technologies will assist medical personnel in determining the type and extent of brain damage.

For more information, visit the brain injury research web site.