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NFL’s Chief Medical Officer recognizes the challenges to identify concussions due to “lack of objective tests”

The concussion protocol is the hottest topic in the NFL.

What happened with Tua Tagovailoain Week 3 and 4 the NFL is changing their modus operandi regarding head trauma.

As a result, they announced changes to the concussion protocol to prevent a situation similar to Tua’s episode.

The NFL’s Chief Medical Officer Allen Sills spoke with Sports Illustrated about the measures the league will take to protect its players and how the concussion protocol could improve.

Allen Sills believes the players have a crucial role to identify concussions

Allen Sills, NFL’s Chief Medical Officer, commented to SI on the difficulties that medical teams from all NFL teams have while diagnosing a concussion.

“As a practicing neurosurgeon, I would tell you that we often have a hard time identifying whether or not a concussion has occurred because we lack objective evidence for a concussion.”

According to Sillsthe problem relies upon players, not only the medical staff makes mistakes. Several physicians base their analysis on the players because they identify and indicate the symptoms.

Nevertheless, most players avoid the responsibility of detecting their symptoms because they want to play.

“There are difficult situations where all the objective neurological findings are normal, and we have to rely on symptoms, and those are difficult situations for all physicians,” Allen Sills mentioned to Sports Illustrated.

The Miami Dolphins fired the unaffiliated neurotrauma consultant that diagnosed Tua Tagovailoa. Miami’s quarterback left two games with head trauma.

According to Cameron Wolfe, the consultant committed several mistakes on the initial concussion test. A decision demonstrated a commitment to improving everything related to concussions.

The improvement of concussion detection in the NFL

According to numbers, there was an improvement in concussion detection last season.

Reports illustrate that NFL teams diagnosed 187 concussions during the 2021 season. NBC Sports reported that concussions dropped almost 10% from last year.

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