If you watched this week’s Thursday night matchup between the Bengals and the Dolphins, you saw Cincinnati cornerback Josh Shaw leave the game after taking a huge hit to head from Cincinnati safety George Iloka in the fourth quarter while the two teammates were attempt to make a tackle. Shaw remained on the ground for the entire commercial break, but was able to walk off the field after several minutes under the guidance of training staff in order to be medically examined.
After an examination, Shaw was determined to have suffered a “stinger,” the colloquial term from what is medically referred to as cervical cord neuropraxia. The injury, a result of a blow to the neck or shoulder area, causes a jolt and stinging sensation to travel down one or both of the affected individual’s arms, and can also lead to numbness, weakness, and or a burning sensation in the arms. I’m here to question whether Shaw suffered a stinger on that play.
As I’ve said before, I have no medical training. Even if I did, there’s no way to diagnose such an injury just by seeing it on a TV screen (I’ve been looking for a video of the hit online, but I haven’t found anything). However, unless I’m misremembering, the bulk of the blow seemed to be taken the side of Shaw’s head, not his neck or shoulder. Given the way that he froze up immediately after getting hit, fell to the ground, and stayed there for several minutes, I think it’s possible that Shaw also or instead suffered a concussion on the play. You’re likely wondering, “if they medical staff had thought that Shaw suffered a concussion, why would they diagnose him with a stinger? What incentive would an NFL team have to misdiagnose head injuries?” To answer these questions, I will first provide you with some other examples of questionable diagnoses and descriptions of injuries within the past couple years.
On November 22nd, 2015, Kansas City wide receiver and running back De’Anthony Thomas suffered a concussion. He was out of games and practices for around three weeks. The Chiefs planned to have him play in their December 27th contest against Cleveland. The day before the game, however, the Chiefs organization announced that Thomas would not play due to a “non-football related injury.” During a press conference after the game, Kansas City head coach Andy Reid said that Thomas was dealing with “personal issues” that forced him to miss the game. Thomas missed the remainder of the season for reasons that Reid specifically described as “not concussion-related.” However, around a month later, Thomas posted the following tweet on his Twitter account:
After an examination, Shaw was determined to have suffered a “stinger,” the colloquial term from what is medically referred to as cervical cord neuropraxia. The injury, a result of a blow to the neck or shoulder area, causes a jolt and stinging sensation to travel down one or both of the affected individual’s arms, and can also lead to numbness, weakness, and or a burning sensation in the arms. I’m here to question whether Shaw suffered a stinger on that play.
As I’ve said before, I have no medical training. Even if I did, there’s no way to diagnose such an injury just by seeing it on a TV screen (I’ve been looking for a video of the hit online, but I haven’t found anything). However, unless I’m misremembering, the bulk of the blow seemed to be taken the side of Shaw’s head, not his neck or shoulder. Given the way that he froze up immediately after getting hit, fell to the ground, and stayed there for several minutes, I think it’s possible that Shaw also or instead suffered a concussion on the play. You’re likely wondering, “if they medical staff had thought that Shaw suffered a concussion, why would they diagnose him with a stinger? What incentive would an NFL team have to misdiagnose head injuries?” To answer these questions, I will first provide you with some other examples of questionable diagnoses and descriptions of injuries within the past couple years.
On November 22nd, 2015, Kansas City wide receiver and running back De’Anthony Thomas suffered a concussion. He was out of games and practices for around three weeks. The Chiefs planned to have him play in their December 27th contest against Cleveland. The day before the game, however, the Chiefs organization announced that Thomas would not play due to a “non-football related injury.” During a press conference after the game, Kansas City head coach Andy Reid said that Thomas was dealing with “personal issues” that forced him to miss the game. Thomas missed the remainder of the season for reasons that Reid specifically described as “not concussion-related.” However, around a month later, Thomas posted the following tweet on his Twitter account:
Thomas is still on the Chiefs roster, and though he not is not listen on any injury report or reserve list, he has yet to appear in a game so far this season, around 10 months after suffering his concussion against the Chargers. Another questionable example of questionable labeling of injuries is actually one that is currently ongoing, involving Chargers offensive lineman King Dunlap. Dunlap, who has suffered four diagnosed concussions since 2012, including one last year, missed last Sunday’s game, and continues to be out of practice, due to what Chargers head coach Mike McCoy had described as “migraines.”
Now, although migraine headaches are often used synonymously with other kinds of headaches, the two terms are not truly interchangeable; the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke specifically states: a migraine is not the same as a normal headache. Most people have headaches from time to time. These are usually tension headaches. Migraines, though, are sudden and strong, pounding headaches on one side of the head.
Given Dunlap’s concussion history, McCoy has been asked by the media whether Dunlap’s migraines are concussion-related, to which he replied, “this is not linked to concussions.” Once more, I know very little about medicine, and I haven’t examined King Dunlap’s medical records. I also know that headaches, especially migraines, if that is truly the type of headache that Dunlap is experiencing, can often come on suddenly and without any apparent cause. However, to deny that concussions could have played any sort of role in Dunlap’s headaches seems shortsighted at best, and possibly deliberately misleading.
These two examples of Thomas and Dunlap, are just two random ones that happened to come to my mind in the past hour. I’m sure they are other examples that I don’t know about going on right now, and many many others that have occurred in recent years.
The difficult question to answer in this saga is why some NFL teams are possibly not disclosing true information about concussions. As is often the case when no other cause is immediately apparent, the answer is likely economic. Every player on an NFL roster obviously has a large monetary value-- for a large amount of them, we’re talking 7 or 8 digit salaries every year. When trading players, teams will obviously be offered less money or other incentives for a player who has a lengthy concussion history. This fact makes sense; teams looking to add players to their rosters want players who have had few injuries in the past and have a high probability of being healthy and staying on the field. It gives them more bang for their buck.
A player also wants to earn the biggest contract he can from teams interested in him, so he is not very motivated to disclose the unrecorded details of his medical history, either. When looking at two identical players, one who dealt with “migraines” or “personal issues” last year, and the other who suffered a “concussion,” obviously the former is going to be more desirable because he seems like he did not deal with injury, whereas the latter did.
Whether some NFL coaches are deliberately lying about head injuries and whether their incentives are economic or otherwise, I obviously cannot say. I’m giving a very rough hypothesis in this entry, but the more important issue is to simply recognize that what shows up on an injury report or comes out of a coach’s or player’s mouth might not always tell the full story.
Information on Stingers:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19691361
Information on Migraines: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMHT0024778/
No comments:
Post a Comment