Concussion in sport is a big concern at the moment.
Everybody's talking about it, it's always in the
news, it's always in the headlines and we've seen
some very high profile cases on TV and in the papers.
I'm Professor Tony Belli and I'm a professor of
trauma neurosurgery at the University of Birmingham
and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham.
And my main research interest is head injury and primarily
head injury in sport.
What's exciting is a piece of research has just come out of
the University of Birmingham in collaboration with
the Rugby Football Union.
What we've actually done is to study elite rugby players
in the premiership and the championship in England over
a course of two seasons.
And what we did was actually to collect saliva, believe
it or not, from rugby players during an injury
assessment that was part of the normal medical procedure.
Over two seasons we collected some samples of saliva from
most incidents that happened in those competitions.
We were looking for an objective way to
diagnose concussion.
Now, this sounds straightforward.
You know, everybody can spot a concussion when someone
is lying on the pitch motionless, but actually the
majority of concussions don't really present like that.
So very subtle events, you know, just a brief
period of disorientation or stumbling or just, you
know, not being quite right.
And it could be missed, particularly if the doctor
is sitting, you know, 40, 50 metres away from where
the action is taking place and then you go and see
the player and actually often those signs of
concussion may have just disappeared already, except
the concussion has already done the damage.
And after the player returns to play too soon, and that
concussion hasn't recovered, they get injured again.
Those effects can sometimes be very, very
severe if not catastrophic.
And this is a situation where everybody wants to avoid.
So everybody's looking for a better way of looking
after the players and that goes in concussion.
So here we have a study that actually looks at saliva.
And what we find is saliva can actually help identify
concussion, nearly a hundred percent of the cases.
It's actually very, very accurate.
So this is a breakthrough because, as I say, it is something
that is not invasive,
it's easy to collect and it give you accurate results
virtually every time.
So how this can be used is that if you imagine
in an elite sport situation, the doctors and the
physiotherapists will want to have an objective tool
to corroborate the clinical diagnosis, but perhaps
even more importantly, in community sports,
there is no medical help.
You know, it's often, in the hands of the parents or
a coach or clearly no one.
So I think what you want there is that something
that can really, creates effectively an opportunity
for people to have something that is equivalent to a
professional assessment.
You know, really with players what happens in the
elite rugby, for example, with bigger players and
professional doctors, professional physios.
And what you have is a test effectively that can
give you the same level of accuracy as that.
And then now it's going to be available effectively
for potentially for millions of youth players
or all the players.
And that can really, as I say, transform the way we recognise
and manage concussion.
And hopefully this will help prevent some of the
incidents, you know, some of the perhaps horrific
incidents that we've seen recently or see in where,
players unfortunately carry the effects of the concussions
and may have suffered in some deleterious effects
that could have been avoided.
So we think this is exciting and hopefully
this will make positive impacts on the sport
for a number of people.