http://www.newsday.com/news/health/the-daily-apple-1.4760551/former-nfler-merril-hoge-talks-football-safety-with-new-helmet-system-1.6354411
Former NFL player and current ESPN analyst Merril Hoge almost lost his life to post-concussion syndrome in 1994.
“I was in cardiac arrest and intensive care for two days,” said Hoge,
who played for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Chicago Bears, and was one of
the first players to undergo cognitive testing. “Not only did [a head
injury] cost me my career, it almost cost me my life.”
At the time of his forced retirement, Hoge had the longest consecutive
playing streak in the NFL. Since then, Hoge has made it a point to
promote advancements in concussion prevention and recently spoke about technology advancement at a forum hosted by Riddell Sports in Manhattan.
Riddell Sports, based in Rosemont, IL and currently the world’s leading
helmet maker, has been using the Head Impact Telemetry-Sideline
Response System sensor units since 2003. The units are placed inside the
helmets of athletes in amateur football programs who choose to
participate. But Riddell Sports has recently expanded its technology to
include the InSite Impact Response System, which was developed based on
millions of data points secured through HIT-SRS.
Currently, more than a dozen high schools across the United States are
using InSite, according to Thad Ide, Riddell Sports’ senior vice
president of research and product development.
The impact systems, which are designed by New Hampshire-based Simbex,
record data every time a player receives a hit to the head and transmit a
warning signal to sideline medical personnel who are wearing
specialized pagers.
“We think [this is] the game-changer,” Ide said. “[InSite] sends an
alert -- or not -- to the sideline based on data. What’s alert-able and
what’s not is based on skill level and playing position.”
Dr. Rick Greenwald, Simbex’s founder and president, said that during
the last 10 years, two million-plus impacts have been recorded by
schools using the technology. “Simbex specializes in biofeedback systems
and makes that data actionable,” he said. “The data is used to inform
athletes and the training staff. This is not a diagnosis of concussion,
this is not a diagnostic tool -- this is to understand what happens on
the field.”
Greenwald noted that one of the initial challenges of the HIT/SRS
system -- which is very much like the air bag sensors in cars -- was to
find appropriate placement on the athletes. “You have to be nonintrusive
to measure things on the field in sports,” he said. “You have to find a
way to measure athletes that doesn’t interfere with their job -- one of
the great places to do that was inside the helmet.”
Scott Blatt, the athletic trainer at Westlake High School in Westlake
Village, Calif., started using InSite with his football program this
season and is part of the small group currently using this technology.
“If an alert goes off, I’ll bring the athlete over to the sidelines and
ask basic questions. If I’m comfortable, I’ll let them play -- if not,
they’ll [go through] further evaluation. I’ve never had an athlete
sustain a concussion and the monitor didn’t go off.”
Hoge believes that with the right preventions and technology in place,
football can be played as a safe sport. “If you let kids sit on the
couch, play [video games] and eat a doughnut, you’ve jeopardized their
health -- [maybe] more than letting them play football with the right
tools.”