BY HANNAH PURKEY

In print | Published September 2, 2010

Remember these words: plate, water, knife, fight, bath, nurse, fall, ice, woman. Could you pick them out of a list five minutes later? Ten? What if they were shapes instead of words; could you recall their spatial orientation?

These questions are only a few of the tests Swat athletic trainers are asking fall athletes to complete as part of Swarthmore’s ever-evolving concussion protocol. This newest addition of tests, called ImPACT, has athletes undergo a series of computer exercises testing their recall ability and speed as well as other brain functions such as attention span. The results of these tests can then be used as a baseline comparison if athletes ever are diagnosed with a concussion.

This new testing is another improvement to an already extensive protocol that has been in place at Swat for several years. As research in head traumas has changed, the athletic trainers have adapted Swat’s program, but have always erred on the side of caution.

“We have athletes come in here with head injuries who want to get back on the field, saying there is a big game coming up or they are playing Johns Hopkins,” Head Athletic Trainer Marie Mancini said. “And we have to tell them no, you have physics class and biology class coming up and that is more important.”

However, not all athletic institutions are this careful about head injuries and there are very few rules that require them to be. Even the NCAA’s supposed crackdown this year on concussions does not require enough of college athletic departments.

New legislation only requires that member institutions have a concussion management plan for student-athletes, according to legislation 3.2.4.16 in the NCAA handbook. The plan requires schools to do four things: educate students on concussion symptoms, evaluate players showing symptoms of a concussion, remove an athlete diagnosed with a concussion for at least the remainder of that calendar day, and have a medical clearance for all athletes diagnosed with a concussion by a physician or the physician’s designee (e.g. an athletic trainer).

While this may be a good start, it is not a strict enough policy to protect student-athletes. By merely requiring athletes diagnosed with a concussion to be removed for the remainder of the day that they are injured, this policy leaves the possibility that athletes with concussions could return to contact play within 24 hours of being injured. As more research comes out about the prevalence of head injuries in intercollegiate sports and the serious side affects of improper treatment, the NCAA needs to help athletic trainers protect their athletes by setting stricter standards for concussion policies.

In the last few years, there has been an increased awareness of head injuries not only in medical fields but also in the press. Most of the recent articles that have highlighted the severe consequences of head injuries have focused on either professional athletic teams or sports the public sees as high-risk for concussions like football or hockey.

However, a 2003 study done by the department of kinesiology at Temple University reported that of 15 different intercollegiate sports tracked over three academic years for concussion injuries, the two sports that reported the highest percentage of players suffering a concussion during a game were women’s lacrosse (13.9%) and women’s soccer (11.4%). Although other studies have women’s lacrosse and women’s soccer switched, these two sports still occupy the two highest rates of concussions. Overall, studies have shown that soccer and lacrosse players of both genders suffer a higher percentage of head injuries than other sports and that female athletes suffer a significantly higher percentage of concussions than male athletes competing in the same sport.

The fact that concussions are a problem across many different sports make it even more important for the NCAA to require schools to have better concussion policies. While it is possible that the apparent increase in concussions is due to better awareness of concussion symptoms by coaches, trainers and players, this does not change the dangerous long-term side affects of repeated concussions. The NCAA should be leading the athletic community in concussion prevention and treatment, not just now starting to require schools to have a plan for athletes with head injuries.

Swarthmore’s athletic department has set a good example for what the NCAA guidelines should be. The current protocol here at Swat has any player reporting symptoms of a head injury pulled from participation and immediately evaluated by an athletic trainer, according to Mancini and Assistant Athletic Trainer Jessica Lydon. If an athlete is diagnosed with a concussion after seeing a physician at Worth Health Center, he/she is ineligible to play for a minimum of seven days. Even after being cleared by the same physician, an athlete must undergo a Return To Play protocol closely monitored by the athletic training staff before being cleared for competition.

The NCAA’s current protocol requirements are closer to that of the NFL than those of Swarthmore. A recent column in the Philadelphia Daily News calls the required poster in NFL locker rooms outlining the dangers of concussion symptoms as “as bold a step as the NFL has ever taken in trying to change the culture of hiding brain trauma from doctors.” Not to belittle the NFL’s efforts, but I think the NCAA can do better than a poster or simply the requirement of having a plan to protect its student-athletes.

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