Australians are looking for ways to better detect, report and prevent injuries in athletes.
According to a post in the The New Daily, the Australian Centre for Research into Injury and Sport and Its Prevention is taking seriously a recent study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association that found evidence of pervasive CTE in the brains of football players.
ACRISP is now pushing for a national log of sporting injuries that would help inform and evaluate current safety measures in the country.
ACRISP's Dr. Lauren Fortington commended the United States for the safety precautions its athletics programs have already put into place. “The USA has a proven system for their sport setting, and they’ve demonstrated a reduction in fatal and serious injuries in American-based sports, such as American football, cheerleading, pole vault and baseball,” Fortington said.
Fortington is lobbying for a uniquely Australian system, noting that Australians “actually have to develop a system for Australia, because we do our sports differently here than the way they play.”
The study ACRISP is reacting to was conducted by the Boston University School of Medicine and the VA Boston Healthcare System, which examined 202 brains that belonged to men who played football at all levels and later were donated for research. The study found CTE in 177, or 87 percent of those brains involved in the study. Instances of CTE in the brains of NFL players were much higher. The study found evidence of CTE in 110 out of 111 brains donated by ex-NFL players.
