Mechanisms and consequences of head injuries in soccer: a study of 451 patients

2011 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. E1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malgorzata A. Kolodziej ◽  
Stephan Koblitz ◽  
Christopher Nimsky ◽  
Dieter Hellwig

Object The goal of this study was to evaluate the incidence and mechanisms of head injury during soccer games and to describe the results after spontaneous resolution of symptoms or after treatment. Methods In a retrospective study from 2005, records on 451 players from the German Soccer Association who had suffered various injuries were collected. The study used a questionnaire in which the player described the accident and the playing situation as well as the clinical course after trauma. This questionnaire also included information about the physical symptoms of the players and the length of their rehabilitation. Two groups were formed: one with head injuries (case group), and the other with injuries of other body parts (control group). Results Of the injuries reported, 108 (23.9%) were related to the head, 114 (25.3%) to the knee, 58 (13%) to the ankle, 56 (12%) to the calf, and 30 (7%) to the shoulder. The areas of the head most frequently involved were the facial and occipital regions. In the head injury group, the head duel was the most common playing action to lead to trauma. In those cases, the body part that hit the injured player was the elbow, arm, or head of the opponent. The most common playing situation was combat in the penalty area. The median hospitalization time after the trauma was 2 days for the case group and 5 days for the control group. The rehabilitation time for the case group was also shorter (median 6.5 days) than for the control group (median 30 days). Conclusions Trivial head injuries in soccer can have a long and complicated course. Nevertheless, the temporary disability is shorter in most cases than for players with injuries to other parts of the body. Modifying the rules of play would be necessary to reduce the incidence of head trauma.

1981 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Chadwick ◽  
Michael Rutter ◽  
Gillian Brown ◽  
David Shaffer ◽  
Michael Traub

SYNOPSISA 2¼-year prospective study of children suffering head injury is described. Three groups of children were studied: (a) 31 children with ‘severe’ head injuries resulting in a post-traumatic amnesia (PTA) of at least 7 days; (b) an individually matched control group of 28 children with hospital treated orthopaedic injuries; and (c) 29 children with ‘mild’ head injuries resulting in a PTA exceeding 1 hour but less than 1 week. Individual psychological testing was carried out as soon as the child recovered from PTA, and then again 4 months, 1 year, and 2¼ years after the injury. A shortened version of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC), the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability and a battery of tests of specific cognitive functions were employed. The mild head injury group had a mean level of cognitive functioning below the control group, but the lack of any recovery during the follow-up period indicated that the intellectual impairment was not a consequence of the injury. In the severe head injury group, the presence of cognitive recovery and a ‘dose—response’ relationship with the degree of brain injury showed that the intellectual deficits were caused by brain damage. Some degree of cognitive impairment was common following head injuries giving rise to a PTA of at least 2 weeks. Conversely no cognitive sequelae, transient or persistent, could be detected when the PTA was less than 24 hours. The results were less consistent in the 1-day to 2-week PTA range, but the evidence suggested that a broadly defined threshold for impairment operated at about that level of severity of injury. Timed measures of visuo-spatial and visuo-motor skills tended to show more impairment than verbal skills but otherwise there was no suggestion of a specific pattern of cognitive deficit. Recovery was most rapid in the early months after injury, but substantial recovery continued for 1 year with some improvement continuing in the second year in some children, especially those with the most severe injuries. Age, sex and social class showed no significant effects on the course of recovery.


Author(s):  
Elena Amoruso ◽  
Lucy Dowdall ◽  
Mathew Thomas Kollamkulam ◽  
Obioha Ukaegbu ◽  
Paulina Kieliba ◽  
...  

Abstract Objective Considerable resources are being invested to enhance the control and usability of artificial limbs through the delivery of unnatural forms of somatosensory feedback. Here, we investigated whether intrinsic somatosensory information from the body part(s) remotely controlling an artificial limb can be leveraged by the motor system to support control and skill learning. Approach In a placebo-controlled design, we used local anaesthetic to attenuate somatosensory inputs to the big toes while participants learned to operate through pressure sensors a toe-controlled and hand-worn robotic extra finger. Motor learning outcomes were compared against a control group who received sham anaesthetic and quantified in three different task scenarios: while operating in isolation from, in synchronous coordination, and collaboration with, the biological fingers. Main results Both groups were able to learn to operate the robotic extra finger, presumably due to abundance of visual feedback and other relevant sensory cues. Importantly, the availability of displaced somatosensory cues from the distal bodily controllers facilitated the acquisition of isolated robotic finger movements, the retention and transfer of synchronous hand-robot coordination skills, and performance under cognitive load. Motor performance was not impaired by toes anaesthesia when tasks involved close collaboration with the biological fingers, indicating that the motor system can close the sensory feedback gap by dynamically integrating task-intrinsic somatosensory signals from multiple, and even distal, body- parts. Significance Together, our findings demonstrate that there are multiple natural avenues to provide intrinsic surrogate somatosensory information to support motor control of an artificial body part, beyond artificial stimulation.


1981 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian Brown ◽  
Oliver Chadwick ◽  
David Shaffer ◽  
Michael Rutter ◽  
Michael Traub

SYNOPSISA 2¼-year prospective study of children suffering head injury is described. Three groups of children were studied: (a) 31 children with ‘severe’ head injuries resulting in a post-traumatic amnesia (PTA) of at least 7 days; (b) an individually matched control group of 28 children with hospital-treated orthopaedic injuries; and (c) 29 children with ‘mild’ head injuries resulting in a PTA exceeding 1 hour but less than 1 week. A retrospective assessment of the children's pre-accident behaviour was obtained by parental interview and teacher questionnaire immediately after the accident and before the behavioural sequelae of the injury could be known. Further psychiatric assessments were undertaken 4 months, 1 year and 21 years after the initial injury. The mild head injury group showed a raised level of behavioural disturbance before the accident but no increase thereafter. It was concluded that head injuries resulting in a PTA of less than I week did not appreciably increase the psychiatric risk. By contrast, there was a marked increase in psychiatric disorders following severe head injury. The high rate of new disorders in children with severe head injuries who were without disorder before the accident, together with the finding of a dose–response relationship with the severity of brain injury, indicated a causal relationship. However, the development of psychiatric disorders in children with severe head injuries was also influenced by the children's pre-accident behaviour, their intellectual level, and their psychosocial circumstances. With the exception of social disinhibition and a slight tendency for the disorders to show greater persistence over time, the disorders attributable to head injury showed no specific features.


2010 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 112-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brennen W. Mills ◽  
Owen B. J. Carter ◽  
Robert J. Donovan

The objective of this case study was to experimentally manipulate the impact on arousal and recall of two characteristics frequently occurring in gruesome depictions of body parts in smoking cessation advertisements: the presence or absence of an external physical insult to the body part depicted; whether or not the image contains a clear figure/ground demarcation. Three hundred participants (46% male, 54% female; mean age 27.3 years, SD = 11.4) participated in a two-stage online study wherein they viewed and responded to a series of gruesome 4-s video images. Seventy-two video clips were created to provide a sample of images across the two conditions: physical insult versus no insult and clear figure/ground demarcation versus merged or no clear figure/ground demarcation. In stage one, participants viewed a randomly ordered series of 36 video clips and rated how “confronting” they considered each to be. Seven days later (stage two), to test recall of each video image, participants viewed all 72 clips and were asked to identify those they had seen previously. Images containing a physical insult were consistently rated more confronting and were remembered more accurately than images with no physical insult. Images with a clear figure/ground demarcation were rated as no more confronting but were consistently recalled with greater accuracy than those with unclear figure/ground demarcation. Makers of gruesome health warning television advertisements should incorporate some form of physical insult and use a clear figure/ground demarcation to maximize image recall and subsequent potential advertising effectiveness.


Author(s):  
Mireia Sempere-Tortosa ◽  
Francisco Fernández-Carrasco ◽  
Ignasi Navarro-Soria ◽  
Carlos Rizo-Maestre

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is the most common neuropsychological disorder in childhood and adolescence, affecting the basic psychological processes involved in learning, social adaptation and affective adjustment. From previous research, the disorder is linked to problems in different areas of development, with deficiencies in psychological processes leading to the development of the most common characteristics of the disorder such as inattention, excess of activity and lack of inhibitory control. As for the diagnosis, in spite of being a very frequent disorder, there are multiple controversies about which tools are the most suitable for evaluation. One of the most widespread tools in the professional field is behavior inventories such as the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaires for Parents and Teachers or the ADHD Rating Scale-V. The main disadvantage of these assessment tools is that they do not provide an objective observation. For this reason, there are different studies focused on recording objective measures of the subjects’ movement, since hyperkinesia is one of the most characteristic symptoms of this disorder. In this sense, we have developed an application that, using a Kinect device, is capable of measuring the movement of the different parts of the body of up to six subjects in the classroom, being a natural context for the student. The main objective of this work is twofold, on the one hand, to investigate whether there are correlations between excessive movement and high scores in the inventories for the diagnosis of ADHD, Rating Scale-V and Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) and, on the other hand, to determine which sections of the body present the most significant mobility in subjects diagnosed with ADHD. Results show that the control group, composed of neurotypical subjects, presents less kinaesthetic activity than the clinical group diagnosed with ADHD. This indicates that the experimental group presents one of the main characteristics of the disorder. In addition, results also show that practically all the measured body parts present significant differences, being higher in the clinical group, highlighting the head as the joint with the highest effect size.


Author(s):  
Markus Reuber ◽  
Gregg H. Rawlings ◽  
Steven C. Schachter

This chapter explores how dissociation of awareness of either the mind or the body can be experienced by everyone to some degree. It has been suggested that in Non-Epileptic Attack Disorder (NEAD), a protective mechanism of enabling individuals to detach from the difficult emotions they have not yet been able to make sense of has led to a detachment from the awareness of the body, thus resulting in physical symptoms that resemble epileptic seizures. Treatment therefore lies in improving both mind and body awareness. Working with individuals with NEAD or Dissociative Seizures introduces one to the multifaceted nature of humanity. Although there are common themes that emerge through psychological assessment—such as prior experience of illness, neurological insult or physical injury to a specific body part, difficulty recognizing stress in the body or mind, or a tendency to use unhelpful coping strategies during prolonged periods of stress,—no two persons with NEAD have the same seizures because each individual’s experience is unique, making the nature and clinical presentation of the seizure-like experiences idiosyncratic. Despite this, it is always possible to discover the reason that individuals with NEAD experience the symptoms they do, even if it is sometimes initially hard for the individual to accept or believe this.


1989 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avtar Saran

The author compared the response to amitriptyline in headache associated with depression between twelve patients having primary depression (control group) and ten patients with depression after minor closed head injury. In the primary depression group, there was significant reduction in headache and improvement in depression. The minor closed head injury group did not show significant reduction in headache or improvement in depression. The latter group, upon further treatment with phenelzine also showed no reduction in headache or improvement in depression. Results of this study question the earlier reports of the usefulness of amitriptyline in chronic muscle contraction headache and depression associated with minor closed head injury.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3.24) ◽  
pp. 44
Author(s):  
Norlizaa Mohamad ◽  
Jafri Mohd Rohani ◽  
Ismail Abdul Rahman ◽  
Anis Amira Mat Zuki

Prolonged standing is one of the common activities in electronic industry as the task requirement. Prolonged standing can cause discomfort on the body of the workers and can lead to injury and occupational disease. The purpose of this study is to investigate standing workers perception on the fatigue and the discomfort on their respective body region for 12 hours working time. The subjects are the 80 workers with a good health condition and at least 6 months tenure. The subject data are collected via questionnaires and Likert scale to define the discomfort, pain, and fatigue. The workers were interviewed regarding their job and perceived fatigue discomfort. The results show the domination of the lower body region with the higher mean at the lower back, legs, and foot ankle. No statistically significant differences were found between the job tenure and body part discomfort pain and fatigue. There is a significant relation between gender and discomfort pain on legs and foot ankle. The result also shows a strong relation between age and the discomfort body parts of thigh and foot ankle. The perceptions of the workers towards discomfort pain and fatigue cause by prolonged standing during performing the task. The results from this study will provide a view for industrial consultants or ergonomist with evidence to support for ergonomic interventions for prolonged standing activity such as job rotation and work-rest schedule. 


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (22) ◽  
pp. 8239
Author(s):  
Andrzej Mroczkowski

(1) Background: The aim of this article is to investigate the susceptibility to head injuries in physical education students who do not train a specific sports discipline and those who use the fall performed backward with side aligning of the body technique. The other goal is the biomechanical analysis of the impact of the fall technique on the likelihood of head injury. (2) Methods: the study included 57 students, divided into two research groups. Group A consisted of 32 students who had not practiced any sport in a sports club before. Group B consisted of 25 students who, by practicing martial arts, had acquired the skill of the fall performed backward with side aligning of the body. A rotating training simulator (RTS) was used to force the fall backwards. (3) Results: students from group B made significantly fewer “head” errors when falling backwards than in group A. Increasing the speed of falling did not increase the number of “head” errors in group B, but only in group A. The type of the fall test performed affected the increase in the number of “head” errors only in group A. (4) Conclusions: practicing selected sports disciplines in which the fall backwards occurs can protect one against head injuries by acquiring appropriate motor habits. The use of the fall performed backward with side aligning of the body technique with the occurrence of horizontal inertia forces causing a fall reduces the risk of head injuries.


2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-335
Author(s):  
Bistoon Abasi ◽  
Amer Gheitury

Human body as a universal possession of human beings constitutes an interesting domain where questions regarding semantic categorisations might be sought crosslinguistically. In the following, we will attempt to describe the terms used to refer to the body in Hawrami, an Iranian language spoken in Paveh, a small township in the western province of Kermanshah near Iraqi borders. Due to the scarcity of written material, the inventory of 202 terms referring to external and internal body parts were obtained through a field work, which took a long time, and techniques, such as the “colouring task”, observation and recording the terms as used in ordinary conversations and informal interviews with native speakers. The semantic properties of the terms and the way they are related in a partonymy or locative relationship were also investigated. As far as universals of body part terms are concerned, while conforming to ‘depth principle’ concerning the number of levels each partonomy may consist of, Hawrami violates an important feature of this principle by not allowing transitive relations between different levels of partonomic hierarchies. In addition, Hawrami lacks a term for labelling the ‘whole’.


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