Spring 2014
"Earlier this year, the National Football League reached a preliminary settlement with former players who had suffered head injuries during their careers. The amount was staggering: $765 million, and there was concern that it might not actually be enough to cover the nearly 20,000 players who would be eligible.
The settlement became part of the ongoing conversation that has taken place over the last decade or more about the risks and long-term consequences of repeated blows to the head in professional athletes, a conversation that has awakened public awareness of the topic of mild to moderate brain injury, especially sports-related injuries.
With its newly organized Brain Injury and Sports Concussion (BISC) Institute, the University of Virginia Health System is hoping to add to this dialogue, leading the way in creating new understanding about the pathophysiology, diagnosis and treatment of traumatic brain injury, understanding that will help prevent those long-term consequences.
Among the many research initiatives within the institute is a project with student athletes led by neuroradiologist Jason Druzgal, MD, PhD. The assistant professor of radiology is trying to tease out some of the diagnostic difficulties of concussion through research that looks for correlations between physiological findings and how hard and how often an athlete sustains an impact to the head."
Read the full article from UVA Vitals here.