If Only The Rest Of America Got Concussion Care Like NFL Players

Dr. Geoffrey Manley, a California neurosurgeon, is no football fan. He isn’t planning to attend a Super Bowl party this Sunday, and he doubts he’ll even turn on the TV at home as he works on other projects. But for the past four years, Manley been intimately involved in trying to prevent one of the NFL’s most dire problems: permanent brain damage as a result of untreated concussions.  In addition to his job as chief of neurosurgery at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and vice chairman of neurological surgery at the University of California, San Francisco, Manley also moonlights as an unaffiliated neurotrauma consultant, or UNC, for the Oakland Raiders. That means he has a sideline view of every home game, and is part of a medical team that evaluates players who have taken hard hits and could be at risk for concussion. The NFL established the UNC program four years ago, as part of the league’s multi-pronged effort to prevent concussions from happening in the first place, and to prevent athletes from playing through a traumatic brain injury. Continuing to play with a concussion can make the injury worse and prolong recovery time. In advocating for the UNCs ― independent experts who are not part of the team or the team’s medical staff ― the NFL players’ union hoped that objective parties could help relieve the competitive pressure athletes and coaches often feel to play through the pain.   The stakes for the players are ...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news