Without Updated Tools, N.F.L. Is Still Finding Concussions Too Late

“I totally didn’t realize that Tua went through that,” Raheem Mostert, the Dolphins running back, said of the concussion. “But it also kind of made sense toward the end of the game. You know, I was asking myself in the huddle, like, ‘What are we doing? What’s going on?’”

The N.F.L. and the players’ union said in a joint statement on Saturday that they had reviewed the game and that the play involving Tagovailoa did not immediately merit taking him out of the game. “The review established that symptoms of a concussion were neither exhibited nor reported until the following day at which time the team medical personnel appropriately evaluated and placed Mr. Tagovailoa in the concussion protocol,” the league and union said.

The league mandates that nearly 30 medical professionals are on hand for every game. They include athletic trainers and neurotrauma consultants on the sidelines and medical experts scanning the field from press boxes in order to spot any potential head injuries that might be missed below.

But concussions can cause much subtler symptoms, including headaches, sluggishness and difficulty sleeping, some of which are not present immediately after a trauma. The absence of obvious symptoms makes the type of instant diagnosis that is urged in the N.F.L. difficult without the adoption of updated tools that can measure concussion symptoms with a higher degree of specificity.

“Basically, anything that your brain controls can be disrupted by a concussion,” said Dr. Uzma Samadani, a neurosurgeon who was an unaffiliated neurotrauma consultant for four years at Minnesota Vikings games and who developed an eye-tracking device to more definitively diagnose concussions. “Is it possible to make an objective assessment of someone’s total capacity of brain function on the sideline that rapidly? It’s very difficult.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/31/sports/football/tua-nfl-concussions.html