Concussions in American football

Concussions and other types of repetitive play-related head blows in American football have been shown to be the cause of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which has led to player suicides and other debilitating symptoms after retirement, including memory loss, depression and dementia.

The list of ex-NFL players that have either been diagnosed post-mortem with CTE or have reported symptoms of CTE continues to grow.

First discovered in 800 B.C. concussion, named after the Roman word concussed, is one of the greatest causes of death among football players. They occur when the head is subject to a large impact force, resulting in a minor brain injury. The concern with concussions is not something that has recently been an issue. This has been a rising concern since the early 1900s. In 1906, a Harvard student athlete died from a head injury and the team doctors released a report titled “The Physical Aspect of American Football” in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal describing the type, severity and number of injuries the team sustained in the 1905 season.

On September 30, 2014, researchers with Boston University announced that in autopsies of 79 brains of former NFL players, 76 had tested positive for CTE. As of January 2017, that number had grown to 90 out of 94.

The NFL first began to review the subject formally in 1994, then NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue approved the creation of the Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (MTBI) Committee with the stated goal of studying the effects of concussions and sub-concussive injury in NFL players. Tagliabue appointed rheumatologist Elliot Pellman to chair the committee. Pellman's appointment was met with harsh criticism, because he is not a neurologist or neuropsychologist and often admitted ignorance about head injuries. The concussion data collected by the league from 1996 to 2001 has been shown to understate the actual number of diagnosed concussions by ten percent. The league legal representation has been shown to have had ties to the tobacco industry legal defense.

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