Category Archives: Brain Injuries

Concussion game changers: 14 people from Cleveland to Pittsburgh who have advanced football-related brain issues

Brain Injuries

[This post originally appeared on cleveland.com. It has been edited to highlight Jason’s involvement]

Story by Stephanie Kuzydym | @stephkuzy | skuzydym@cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Located 135 miles southeast of Cleveland’s First Energy Stadium is among the world’s most well-known concussion laboratories, disguised under the name Heinz Field.

In 1990, the Pittsburgh Steelers became the epicenter of football-related concussion issues after quarterback Bubby Brister got knocked out one Sunday. Coach Chuck Noll wanted to know why his team’s brain specialist, Joe Maroon, was telling him his quarterback wouldn’t be starting the following week.

“I told him the concussion guidelines say (Brister) needed to stay out a minimum of two weeks,” Maroon recalled.

Noll asked who wrote the guidelines. Maroon told the legendary Steelers coach that Maroon himself was on the committee.

“He looked at me and said, ‘if you want me to sit a player from a game, I want objective data, not guidelines drawn up by a committee with poor facts,'” Maroon said. “He was right.”

That’s the day the kid who grew up in Bridgeport, Ohio, began to change the way everyone, from the National Football League to youth leagues, perceived concussions.

Maroon took the challenge to Mark Lovell, whom he called a “brilliant neuropsychologist.” They came up with a series of questions on reaction time and the brain’s ability to process information.

They took the baseline test to Noll and Steelers owner Art Rooney and said they’d need to test the entire team in order to get the “objective data” Noll requested.

Nearly 25 years later, the Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing, known as ImPACT, is the standard of baseline concussion testing in the NFL, NHL, MLB, MLS, NASCAR, U.S. Olympic teams and more.

“We’ve baselined over 5 million kids and athletes in 12,000 high schools,” Maroon said.

And some of the biggest game changers – from doctors and scientists to lawyers and former football players – don’t stop with Maroon and Lovell. These 14 people and their work have helped make Cleveland and Pittsburgh hotbeds in concussion research.

Jason Luckasevic, law associate at Goldberg, Persky and White

Why he is important: Originator of the NFL concussion lawsuit. The core of his case: the NFL had plenty of notices that football can cause brain damage, but the league’s response was deny, deny, deny and then cover it up.

How he came on the scene: Luckasevic was motivated to sue the NFL to protect his friend Omalu, whom the league was trying to discredit. Looked for a loophole that would make not just the teams, but the league liable. Found it in Brown, et al, v. N.F.L, where former Browns offensive tackle Orlando Brown sued the league after a penalty flag hit his right eye during a 1999 game vs. Jacksonville, temporary blinding him. He sued the league on the terms that the referee was a league employee whose negligence superseded the protection of the collective bargaining agreement. Brown sued for $200 million and the NFL settled the case a year later for an estimated $15 to $25 million.

“Besides Bennet being a friend, the reality of it is I know what a forensic pathologist does,” Luckasevic said. “My brother’s a forensic pathologist who interned under Bennet so I know that all he was doing was looking at tissue under a microscope and saying, ‘There’s something there.’ You don’t make that up. It’s not something you’re just kidding around about when you say that.

“I also know sports. I know football, I know hockey. I’m familiar with what hockey was doing at the time in the early ’90s and now football was closing their eyes to the issues. Not only closing their eyes, but sending out false information to their players and to the public at large. They had pretty much three things against them and I was their worst nightmare for three reasons: No. 1, I understood forensic pathology; No. 2, I understood sports; and No. 3, I was young and naive.”

By 2010, after lawyers in his own firm had laughed at his ambition, Luckasevic teamed with Herman Russomanno, a personal injury attorney in Miami, and Tom Giradi, who was part of the Erin Brockovich lawsuit, to take on the NFL.

What he says now: “My life has changed dramatically over the last seven years. It’s been very difficult. It hasn’t been easy. … It’s very consuming. So consuming that I don’t even watch football anymore because my life is football so it doesn’t interest me.”

Cities with bike shares see higher rates of brain injuries

Brain Injuries, Helmets

Wearing a helmet isn’t cool! My helmet makes my head hot! It’s uncomfortable!

These are just some of the reasons you hear from children and adults explaining why they won’t wear helmets when riding their bikes. In fact, less than half of all Americans use the protective headgear when riding and only 48 percent of children ages 5 to 14 practice the safe habit.

Every year, more than 500,000 bicyclists are injured while riding their bikes and 26,000 of those are children and adolescents who receive traumatic brain injuries. Helmets don’t guarantee safety, but they help reduce the risk of serious injury.

The current increase of bike riding due to a desire to stay more active and reduce vehicle use sparked an increase in some unfortunate areas.

A recent study published in the American Journal of Public Health revealed cities using bicycle shares have higher rates of brain injuries. The researchers examined head injury rates in hospitals from two years before the bike shares existed and the first year after their implementation.

Unlike a bike rental, bike shares allow the user to pick up a bike from a station, ride it to their destination and leave it at a designated drop off. Cities use them to make commuting from different public transportation stops more efficient, allow members to have the availability of a bike without the risk of damage or theft and attract tourists to a bike friendly area without the commitment of a rental.

The problem found in cities like Boston and Denver using bike shares involved the lack of helmet availability. Because it isn’t a rental and the users don’t own the bike, protective headgear isn’t available, placing the sharers at higher risk for traumatic brain injuries.

Pittsburgh’s recent growth as a bike-friendly city led Bike Pittsburgh, Walnut Capital and the City of Pittsburgh to form a partnership and work toward a bike share in the Steel City. The plan is to unveil 500 vandal-proof and sturdy bikes connected to 50 solar-powered stations throughout the city, encouraging point-to-point trips around town.

With an overall goal to extend Pittsburgh’s public transit throughout the East, South and North ends of the city, the Pittsburgh Bike Share Partnership hopes to unveil the project before the Pro Walk/Pro Bike Conference happening this September in Pittsburgh to generate a larger buzz about the project.

Riding a bike is a fun and effective form of transportation, but doing so without a helmet is dangerous and potentially deadly. Many helmet styles and colors exist to suit every person, eliminating the notion of “they aren’t cool” or “they aren’t comfortable.”

Don’t become a statistic. Wear your helmet.

[This post originally appeared on the website for Jason Luckasevic’s firm www.gpwlaw.com]

Footnotes

Pittsburgh Bike Share. (2014). Home/About. [Link]

Graves, J. M. et al. (2014). Public bicycle share programs and head injuries. American Journal of Public Health. [Link]

CDC. (2013). Head injuries and bicycle safety. Tip Sheet. [Link]

Do ‘smart’ helmets hold key for football player’s safety?

Brain Injuries, Helmets, NCAA

Head injuries in football are a hot topic in the media these days, and for good reason. Reports are continually released, detailing the rises in concussion rates and other brain injuries in youth, high school and professional football.

Many fault the NFL for covering up the dangers and allowing players to make the judgment call to resume playing after sustaining a blow to the head. President Obama announced his hesitation about youth playing the physical sport and addressed the growing concerns at a White House Summit.

Some believe the efforts, including a $30 million concussion study by the NCAA and Department of Defense, serve as a PR stunt attempting to divert attention from the topic. In fact, while we’re trying to remove the “suck it up” stigma from contact sports, many believe it’s an empty effort.

Riddell, the company that supplies two-thirds of the helmets for the NFL, developed a new ‘smart’ helmet for use in the 2014 season. A sensor in the helmet sends data to the sidelines if a player sustains an unusually hard hit, allowing a better evaluation and removal from the game if necessary.

The helmets, unfortunately, aren’t foolproof. When tested, sometime they failed to register a blow when dropped from five feet. Moreover, they can’t actually diagnose injuries; simply provide more information about whether or not a player can remain in the game.

Helmets in general aren’t the solution to ending concussions and other brain injuries in football. A study published in 2013 found that while they decrease the risk of brain injury, there isn’t any evidence to suggest they actually protect or help fight the effects of long-term head trauma.

In fact, Riddell is cited as a defendant in many of the current lawsuits against the NFL.

It seems like we’re scrambling, trying to find information fast to help protect the players. Hopefully some of these methods actually pan out and allow solutions to make football safer, but only time will tell.

Footnotes

Boston Globe. (2014). Obama’s concussion summit: Sucking it up. [Link]

Gammons, M. R. (2013). Helmets in sport: Fact and fallacy. American College of Sports Medicine. [Link]

Griggs, B. (2014). ‘Smart’ football helmet may help detect concussions. CNN. [Link]

NCAA. (2014). NCAA, DoD launch concussion study. [Link]

NCAA owes Duty of Care to protect against debilitating effects of concussions

Brain Injuries, NCAA

United States Magistrate Judge Cynthia Reed Eddy of the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Pennsylvania recommended the denial of the Motion to Dismiss filed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in a lawsuit filed by Matthew and Jessica Onyshko.  The NCAA moved for dismissal of the action, arguing that the Onyshkos did not allege sufficient facts in their Complaint to support their negligence claim; in particular, that the NCAA owed a legal duty to Mr. Onyshko.

Onyshko suffers from a progressive brain and spinal cord injury with ALS-like symptoms caused by repeated head trauma during his college football career as a linebacker at California University of Pennsylvania.  He and his wife filed suit against the NCAA in December 2013, alleging that the NCAA breached its duty to warn or take effective action to protect him from the long-term effects of concussions and sub-concussive blows to the head suffered while playing NCAA collegiate football.

In recommending denial of the NCAA’s Motion to Dismiss, Magistrate Judge Eddy stated that the Onyshkos alleged sufficient facts in their Complaint to proceed with their negligence claim against the NCAA.  Onyshko, who is employed as a firefighter with the city of Pittsburgh, awaits a decision on the recommendation by District Judge Cathy Bissoon.  The NCAA has until June 16 to file Objections to Judge Eddy’s Report and Recommendation.

The lawsuit was filed by Jason Luckasevic, Esquire, with Goldberg, Persky & White, P.C. of Pittsburgh, a personal injury law firm.