The odds that a football player will develop the devastating Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy appears to be triggered not by the numbers of concussions but rather by the cumulative numbers of head impacts and their severities. This the result of a Harvard Mass. General Hospital retrospective study that reviewed the records of 631 deceased football players and calculated a cumulative head impact index (CII) and tabulated the numbers of recorded concussions for each. The players spent an average of 12.5 years on the gridiron and died at nearly 60 years of age.
Taken as a group, the players’ CII values, that is the number of their repetitive head impacts, were more highly correlated with their chances of having developed CTE as seen on autopsy than were their numbers of concussions.
The bottom line: head injuries, even those that don’t trigger concussions, are dangerous and lead to a lethal degenerative neurologic disease.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-39183-0
#cte #chronictraumaticencephalopathy #concussions #headimpacts #cii
