As someone who has sustained seven concussions, and as a practicing Emergency Physician I feel like I can comment on this from both sides of the fence. Your (lack of) recollection of your Whistler accident sounds nearly identical to my last injury though I was snowboarding, and made me laugh.
Firstly this is an excellent article. I was particularly impressed with your ability explain some fairly complicated concepts in easy to follow language without losing essential information. I can address your questions about the validity of the study. In short it's a pilot study that should trigger further research. I would not rush out to buy a collar based on this just yet, though it does look promising. Things they need to do is trials with a lot more subjects in it to lessen the chances of getting statistical errors and linking it to clinical outcomes i.e. in this study they looked at a bunch of stuff they think correlates with concussion risk but now they need to prove it actually prevents clinically diagnosed concussions. What would be interesting to me is if a collar that detected or anticipated impact somehow (accelerometer based maybe) and in response applied pressure only at that time might be more effective, or at least better tolerated (there was a high drop out rate in this study of people not wanting to wear the collar).
The area of traumatic brain injury is difficult to study because of ethical constraints as well as the variability in the way concussions can present. They are not always as easy to diagnose as Cam's above experience that pretty much everyone can agree on. As an interesting aside I have never jumped on the full face band wagon. While it makes sense that they might prevent facial smash injuries, I always wondered/worried that the jaw bar might actually act as a lever and increase the risk of breaking your neck. Just to be clear I HAVE NO EVIDENCE to support that theory. Last time I searched the medical literature (10 yrs ago) I could not find anything that answers this question one way or the other. Maybe there is something out there now on it.
In terms of should you wear a helmet, YES ABSOLUTELY! While they don't seem to effectively prevent concussions, they do prevent other complications like death (no I'm not being dramatic here) so it's a no-brainer (sorry, couldn't resist).
Great to see NSMB covering this issue.
Oct. 25, 2017, 10:17 a.m. - Moritz Haager
As someone who has sustained seven concussions, and as a practicing Emergency Physician I feel like I can comment on this from both sides of the fence. Your (lack of) recollection of your Whistler accident sounds nearly identical to my last injury though I was snowboarding, and made me laugh. Firstly this is an excellent article. I was particularly impressed with your ability explain some fairly complicated concepts in easy to follow language without losing essential information. I can address your questions about the validity of the study. In short it's a pilot study that should trigger further research. I would not rush out to buy a collar based on this just yet, though it does look promising. Things they need to do is trials with a lot more subjects in it to lessen the chances of getting statistical errors and linking it to clinical outcomes i.e. in this study they looked at a bunch of stuff they think correlates with concussion risk but now they need to prove it actually prevents clinically diagnosed concussions. What would be interesting to me is if a collar that detected or anticipated impact somehow (accelerometer based maybe) and in response applied pressure only at that time might be more effective, or at least better tolerated (there was a high drop out rate in this study of people not wanting to wear the collar). The area of traumatic brain injury is difficult to study because of ethical constraints as well as the variability in the way concussions can present. They are not always as easy to diagnose as Cam's above experience that pretty much everyone can agree on. As an interesting aside I have never jumped on the full face band wagon. While it makes sense that they might prevent facial smash injuries, I always wondered/worried that the jaw bar might actually act as a lever and increase the risk of breaking your neck. Just to be clear I HAVE NO EVIDENCE to support that theory. Last time I searched the medical literature (10 yrs ago) I could not find anything that answers this question one way or the other. Maybe there is something out there now on it. In terms of should you wear a helmet, YES ABSOLUTELY! While they don't seem to effectively prevent concussions, they do prevent other complications like death (no I'm not being dramatic here) so it's a no-brainer (sorry, couldn't resist). Great to see NSMB covering this issue.