Headlining a lecture next week at the Wilton Family Y called “Concussion and Trauma in Youth Sports” is Dr. Scott Bender, a Wilton dad and chiropractor who is the director of the CT Spine and Health Center in Stamford. The lecture is Tuesday, Sept. 16 at 6:30 p.m..
It’s an opportune topic, according to Bender, definitely for the beginning of the fall sports season, but also because of the increasing prevalence of head injuries and concussions from many causes.
“The incidence is on the rise, because it’s being reported more often. Not every concussion is happening on the field. There are a lot of people having concussions–more along the line of motor vehicle accidents than sports-related injuries. In the past the trainers and coaches didn’t know how to identify it, or the [awareness] wasn’t in the culture. Now there’s more vigilance about it. Even the kids are more cognizant of it because the psychology is that kids don’t want to say they’ve been injured–they want to play,” he says.
According to Bender, there are over 300,000 reported concussions and sports-related injuries every year, and 1.3 million whiplash-related concussion closed-head injuries every year. “That’s an awful lot of people.”
There’s definitely more research and public education about the nature of concussion. Some of the effort has been focused on trying to make youth sports equipment safer. But Bender believes that’s only partly helpful.
“While concussion is a brain and head injury, it’s also a neck injury, specifically injuries at the high portion of the neck. That’s not something that a lot of people understand very well, even the practitioner community. They talk about concussion in terms of a brain injury only. A lot of people are suffering from something called cranio-cervical syndrome. It’s not being looked at as a cervical/spine injury. That’s where my expertise pulls in. Many people are being misdiagnosed or overlooked and they’re not getting the appropriate treatment.”
The list of post-concussive symptoms include headaches, dizziness, cognitive disfunction, nausea, attention deficits, neck pain, trifocal pain and fatigue.
As for what kind of preventative measures an athlete can take, Bender says, “If you engage in a sport that is contact, like football, lacrosse, soccer–particularly girls’ soccer, which has the second-highest rate of concussion injury, because girls’ necks are not as tensile and strong–you can’t avoid the fact that you’re at risk for a concussive or sub-concussive event.”
Some of Bender’s research background in the area has been with NFL players, most notably Jim McMahon, the former quarterback of the Chicago Bears.
“He’s an example of someone who suffered for a long time with some pretty major symptoms. It wasn’t until he was diagnosed properly and treated that he got better–a lot better. Unfortunately there are a lot of people walking around with the same symptoms–and a lot of them are kids–and they’re not getting the right treatment,” Bender says.
What he’s planning to talk about during his lecture is what happens after a diagnosis. “I’m going to review what the common treatment options are, and some of the diagnostics that lead to the right types of treatments that can help reduce the symptoms and help patients recover from concussion. Often, if you don’t fix the problem in the upper part of the neck, the nervous system won’t heal properly.”