A fatal shooting in an office in Manhattan, held by the former football player from the Shane Tamura high school, has renewed attention on how the head injuries are treated in amateur football.
27 -year -old Tamura shot death in four people before killing himself, leaving a ticket by blaming chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE and NFL for their actions. The headquarters of the National Football League is in the Park Avenue building where filming took place.
Tamura, who played in a Charter school in Los Angeles, had not been diagnosed with a CTE, which can only be confirmed after death. The medical doctor of the city of New York has declared that he will perform a neuropathological evaluation during his autopsy, with the results scheduled for a few weeks.
But the persistent questions about the effectiveness of the repeated trauma tracking strategies in the minds of young athletes are again highlighted.
Karissa Niehoff, CEO of the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), who supervises football in high school in the United States, said that its organization “does not know how many serious brain commodities every year”.
“Cerebral commodities occur in all age groups and many activities, but often not reported. Those that occur at school level can involve the report to the school nurse, the sports coach or the coach,” Niehoff said.
Cerebral emotions are sometimes called “snowflake injuries”, a name that reflects their unique and unpredictable nature. The monitoring of student-athletes is difficult for organizations such as NFH, since state associations have no supervision after the student degree.
A 2023 study at the Boston University Cte Study Center that examined the brain of 152 young, superior and university athletes – most of their football players – who died less than 30 years, discovered that 41% showed signs of CTE.
Suicide was the most common cause of death, but not all athletes with symptoms had cte, according to the study. There was no statistically significant difference in clinical symptoms between those with brain disorder and those who did not show up.
“They played only in high school or college and yet they developed the changes of CTE,” said Ann Mckee, director of the Boston Center.
“It is not known that children who practice amateur sports are at risk. This is not an exclusive disease of professional athletes,” he said, considering the problem of a public health problem. “There is an urgent need to get it closer to an amateur level.”
According to NFHS data, about 30% of brain emotions athletes can have symptoms that last more than four weeks. NFHS has not labeled brain injuries to amateur sports as a public health problem, unlike the Boston Cte Center.
There are protocols to protect athletes suspected of having head injuries, which require immediate removal of the game at all levels. However, there are great differences between professional and amateur protocols.
NFL uses a process of returning to the game in five steps, including evaluation by an independent neurological consultant. Most high schools are unable to pay independent neurologists and depends on sports coaches, which may not have a brain emotion training to evaluate injured players.
Technology also plays an important role in players’ safety. Professional teams use sensors and impact analysis of the helmet to monitor scams. High school programs rarely have access to this technology and depend on visual observation and relationships of the athletes themselves, who may feel under pressure to continue playing.
Universal symptom
Some individuals with CTE have greater aggression, but violence is not a universal symptom.
Several former NFL players, including Jovan Belcher, Irv Cross, Conrad Fobler, Chris Henry, Vincent Jackson, Terry Long, Junior Seau, Demaryius Thomas and Frank Wycheck, were found with CTE after death.
Some have faced behavioral or mental health problems, such as dementia and depression, after important careers in violent sport. Long, Seau and Belcher died of suicide. Belcher fired his girlfriend to death before taking his life.
The former football player of the New England Patriots Aaron Hernandez was sentenced to murder and died of suicide in prison at the age of 27. A posthumous exam revealed a serious CTE.
“Aggling behavior can be part of the syndrome, but it is not universal and we do not know why some patients develop it and others do not,” said dr. Brent Mesel, professor of executive clinical neurology at the University of Texas.
“We cannot explain where the problem is in the brain. We are miles away from the attempt to find out,” he said. “Just like Alzheimer’s disease, some become aggressive and others don’t. Because it happens and whoever happens, we don’t know.”
Progress in prevention and treatment were slow.
“We haven’t really advanced much as regards CTE prevention … except for the fact that we are a little better in the treatment of symptoms,” said Mesel.
“Not all athletes with a contact sport story that develop psychiatric problems will develop this problem,” he said.
“The last thing you want is that everyone in panic thinks that your son will end up doing something like that,” said Mesel. “Therefore, the most important thing is to guarantee the public that your child’s possibilities end up doing what Tamura has done are minimal.”
Source: Terra
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