Dr. Trey Crisco, a member of the US Lacrosse Sports Science and Safety Committee, led a July 26 “crash test dummy” research session at Brown University, where several female lacrosse players, aged 12 to 28, were asked to take 36 swings at a headform.
“The primary aim of this part of our study is to understand the relationship between stick checks and head accelerations. This grant that we received through both US Lacrosse and NOCSAE is just one piece in trying to understand what the potential injury mechanism is for head injuries in girls’ lacrosse. Previously, there have been epidemiological studies and surveillance studies that have found that the majority of head injuries in girls’ lacrosse occur from the stick. These are inadvertent, obviously, and could be a result of follow-throughs from shots, or fore checks. Unlike the boys’ game, where head injuries are dominated by body-to-body or head-to-head contact, in the girls, we don’t see that; but we are seeing the stick impacting the head. So the goal of this study was to get an understanding of the relationship between the severity of the stick checks and the resulting head accelerations.”
“That’s the holy grail of concussion studies, to document the relationship between head acceleration and concussion. We’re not there yet. We know that above 90Gs or 120Gs, you are more likely than not to get a concussion, but there’s not a definitive threshold. It’s unlikely that there will be across all people because people are different and there’s variability. But there are other factors, like where you get hit and what your previous exposures were. We’re still in the process, through other studies, of coming up with that relationship.”
For more: http://www.laxmagazine.com/high_school/girls/2011-12/news/080912_study_leader_explains_crash_test_dummy_head_trials
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