UPFRONT | Roundup NEW APPROACHES Take 5 Canadian sport buying into national concussion guideline A man known for skiing on the edge of danger feels Ca-nadian sport is a safer place. Former national-team racer and Crazy Canuck Steve Podborski, now CEO and president of Parachute Canada, said the majority of national sport organizations have adopted the Canadian Guideline on Concussion in Sport. The federal government committed $1.4 million and tasked Parachute Canada, whose mission statement is injury prevention and saving lives, with developing harmo-nized concussion protocols that can fit all sports. The objective was to have 20 sport organizations sign on within a year of publica-tion, but the uptake has been faster than that. “What we have done in Canada in a period of nine months is gone from a group of disparate, out-of-date, unsubstantiated and poor-ly-understood approaches to dealing with concussion in sport, and we’ve harmonized it with 42 of the 56 national sport organizations in Can-ada,’’ Podborski says. “You take the word ‘sport’ out, you have the world’s best concussion management protocol. We’re working to get it into our emergency rooms right across Canada.” Winter and summer sport organizations funded by Sport Canada are either on board with the concussion guideline or working to get there, Parachute Canada said in a statement. The guideline includes pre-season education, head-injury recognition, ons-ite medical assessment, concussion management, intensive treatment and re-turn-to-school, return-to-sport checklists. While the guideline will help athletes, coaches and administrators assess and contain brain injuries, Pod-borski feels parents will benefit the most from having a tool that takes fear and confusion out of managing symptoms in their children. Recent research indicates concussion recovery no longer requires spending weeks in a dark, silent room, Podborski said, and if as-sessed and treated correctly, returning to school, work and sport can happen sooner. The guidelines can be adapted to every sport, he added. “Figure skating is quite different from hockey, yet they both have adopted it in their context.” Thirty per cent of trau-matic brain injuries are sus-tained by children and youth, many of them occurring while participating in sports and recreational activities, according to Parachute. While it behooves sport organizations that receive federal government funding to adopt the guideline, On-tario has put concussion safety into law. The province passed legis-lation called Rowan’s Law last month. Named after 17-year-old rugby player Rowan Stringer, who died after multiple concussions, the legislation makes concus-sion education, prevention and management practices mandatory. -Donna Spencer, The Canadian Press NUMBER CRUNCH Painful facts Consider these numbers from the Canadian Pain Society 15-30 Per cent of children experience recurring or chronic pain. The prevalence of this pain increases with age Taking into account direct expenses and associated costs such as lost productivity, chronic pain costs $56 billion to $60 billion annually Illustration by Brian Fray One in five Canadian adults suffer from chronic pain People living with pain have double the risk of suicide compared to people without chronic pain 2x 6 Canadian Chiropractor July/August 2018 www.canadianchiropractor.ca
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