NFL Charities has
awarded UB researchers $100,000 to develop a scientific assessment
to determine when an athlete who has had a concussion can safely
return to play.
The grant is one of 15 totaling $1.5 million that the non-profit
arm of the NFL awarded nationwide to support sports medicine
research primarily targeted at concussion prevention and
treatment.
John
Leddy, MD, is principal investigator on the grant, which he and
Barry
Willer, PhD, co-principal investigator, will use to develop an
objective, systematic return-to-play protocol.
“Concussion itself poses little risk if it is properly
managed,” says Leddy, director of UB’s Concussion
Management Clinic and clinical associate professor of orthopaedics, family medicine and
rehabilitation sciences.
“The only risk acutely is hemorrhage, which is generally
detected through CT scans.
“However, return to play before complete recovery involves
much more serious risk.”
Leddy and Willer, professor of psychiatry
and rehabilitation sciences, will test athletes from the Buffalo
Bills, the Buffalo Sabres and Western New York
colleges—including UB—who sustain concussions in the
2012-2013 season, as well as healthy control subjects.
Other the next 18 months, the UB researchers will measure
participants’ heart rate, blood pressure, pulmonary
ventilation, cerebral blood flow and other physiological variables
that are impacted when someone has a concussion. The athletes will
have measurements taken when they’re still experiencing
cognitive symptoms and when they feel like they have
recovered.
“We'll be looking at sophisticated MRI images and
measuring the athletes’ ability to exercise to a maximum rate
without a return of their symptoms, all of which will help us
gather more objective physiological evidence,” Leddy
says.
Leddy and Willer have completed smaller, pilot studies showing
that a
controlled, progressive exercise program using a standard treadmill
test can successfully treat athletes who have undergone
concussions.
Although team physicians traditionally have relied on subjective
assessments of an athlete’s ability to exercise without
experiencing symptoms, the treadmill test produces objective
physiological responses, they stress.
“Athletes cannot ‘fake’ their way through, or
minimize symptom reporting, while undergoing this test,”
Willer says.
In addition to Leddy and Willer, investigators on the grant
include John
Marzo, MD, team physician for the Buffalo Bills, and Leslie
Bisson, MD, team physician for the Buffalo Sabres, both of whom
are UB clinical professors of orthopaedics.
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