el_loco_bielsa
Full Member
There is no shortage of comprehensive concussion protocols around for the football authorities to implement. This one dates back to 2016 and covers pretty much everything that is necessary when managing a concussed player -
https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/bjsports/early/2017/04/26/bjsports-2017-097699.full.pdf
The NFL has had a similar guideline in place dating back to 2009.
There are as far as I can see 2 main issues at play if you’re analysing why the system is so antiquated when it comes to football -
1) the conflict of interest a club doctor has between the necessities of managing his patient safely (concussed player) vs the demands of his employer (pushy manager wanting his player to play even when injured).
This is not a choice other doctors have to make - if the same doctor was working in a trauma unit they’d be undertaking a far more comprehensive assessment and it’d be frankly ludicrous for them to recommend that a patient with a serious head injury be sent back to work immediately.
2) the inherently noisy, evidence free, unscientific, thoughtless nature of football in this country. This permeates everything - from debate around serious subjects like heading a ball and its links to dementia (as we speak the strong, peer-reviewed evidence linking repeated heading of a ball to axonal tau protein disruption in the brain leading to CTE type dementing processes in ex-footballers is being pooh-poohed on another thread because ‘x headed a ball all his life and he’s fine’), all the way to how players’ health is managed.
For example, it’s frankly ludicrous how little time a player’s medical takes because of the fan-led pressure around making signings. The idea that every year we hear at least one story of a player collapsing on a pitch and dying of a congenital heart condition causing a life-threatening arrhythmia which should’ve been diagnosed during the medical if they were comprehensive enough is beyond bizarre, despite the fact that these clubs have no shortage of resources to undertake the necessary testing for every player they sign.
It’s not that they can‘t do it; it’s because they won’t, because the pressure to get the signing over the line from a baying mob of fans and a barely-literate manager just interested in the short-term is too great, so the player’s health is sacrificed.
https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/bjsports/early/2017/04/26/bjsports-2017-097699.full.pdf
The NFL has had a similar guideline in place dating back to 2009.
There are as far as I can see 2 main issues at play if you’re analysing why the system is so antiquated when it comes to football -
1) the conflict of interest a club doctor has between the necessities of managing his patient safely (concussed player) vs the demands of his employer (pushy manager wanting his player to play even when injured).
This is not a choice other doctors have to make - if the same doctor was working in a trauma unit they’d be undertaking a far more comprehensive assessment and it’d be frankly ludicrous for them to recommend that a patient with a serious head injury be sent back to work immediately.
2) the inherently noisy, evidence free, unscientific, thoughtless nature of football in this country. This permeates everything - from debate around serious subjects like heading a ball and its links to dementia (as we speak the strong, peer-reviewed evidence linking repeated heading of a ball to axonal tau protein disruption in the brain leading to CTE type dementing processes in ex-footballers is being pooh-poohed on another thread because ‘x headed a ball all his life and he’s fine’), all the way to how players’ health is managed.
For example, it’s frankly ludicrous how little time a player’s medical takes because of the fan-led pressure around making signings. The idea that every year we hear at least one story of a player collapsing on a pitch and dying of a congenital heart condition causing a life-threatening arrhythmia which should’ve been diagnosed during the medical if they were comprehensive enough is beyond bizarre, despite the fact that these clubs have no shortage of resources to undertake the necessary testing for every player they sign.
It’s not that they can‘t do it; it’s because they won’t, because the pressure to get the signing over the line from a baying mob of fans and a barely-literate manager just interested in the short-term is too great, so the player’s health is sacrificed.