Boston Universitys CTE Breakthrough Could Forever Change Football
The ability to detect brain disease while players are still alive and active will be a massive win for player safety—and a massive problem for the viability of the game
BY KEVIN CLARK
In January 2016, Kansas City Chiefs lineman Laurent Duvernay-Tardif suffered a concussion in the first half of a playoff game against the Houston Texans. There were 271 concussions in the league that season, but Duvernay-Tardif, who was also attending medical school at McGill University during the offseason, understood the implications as well as any football player who’s ever suffered a head injury has. “Concussions is one of my fields of interests,” he told me last summer. “I’ve read a lot about it. Especially when you study pediatrics, which I do, because it’s one of the biggest injuries for kids under 16.”
Duvernay-Tardif recognized the symptoms as soon as he began to display them: “I’m the one who went to the trainer and said, ‘Something is wrong.’ And the reason I was able to do that was I had knowledge.”
While waiting to get cleared for game action the following week, Duvernay-Tardif dove further into his research, reading additional studies on the prognosis for concussions, including examining the testing and “scoring system” that he’d have to go through to prove health and return to the field. He’s now in his medical residency. He’s also still starting for the Chiefs, and I can’t think of a clearer example of how complex the NFL’s concussion issue is than that: Despite all of his knowledge, and despite his personal battle with a concussion, Duvernay-Tardif still plays.
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https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2017/9/26/16372088/boston-university-cte-test-for-the-living-football-impact
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