How a brain doctor watches the Super Bowl
Can a neurosurgeon who evaluates pro football players for concussion be a fan of the game? Yes, he can, said M. Sean Grady, chair of neurosurgery at Penn Medicine. Grady is one of six Penn neurosurgeons who have worked on the sidelines during Eagles home games as independent experts paid by the NFL.
Can a neurosurgeon who evaluates pro football players for concussion be a fan of the game?
Yes, he can, said M. Sean Grady, chair of neurosurgery at Penn Medicine. Grady is one of six Penn neurosurgeons who have worked on the sidelines during Eagles home games as independent experts paid by the NFL.
He's done that for three years as part of a program that responded to growing concerns about the long-term cognitive consequences of concussions, including dementia.
Grady will be watching the Super Bowl on Sunday, and continues to see football as a sport that does more good than bad. Plus, he said, while the NFL gets the lion's share of scrutiny, athletes get plenty of concussions playing other sports.
"It's not just football," he said. "It's rugby. It's field hockey. It's soccer." He added gymnastics and cheerleading.
"I think sports, broadly speaking, are so good for people," Grady said. "It's so good for their health. I think there's a mental component as well, but not everybody's a swimmer. Some people really enjoy contact sports."
He's got bigger concerns about mixed martial arts, where contestants "are just getting slammed to the ground," and boxing, which has been known for decades to lead to brain damage. "The intent is to knock the guy out," Grady said. "That doesn't seem right to me."
Grady attends five Eagles games a year as an unaffiliated expert on brain trauma. He works one side of the field while a colleague takes the other. When concussion is suspected - increasingly, players themselves volunteer that they feel dazed after a hit - he and a team doctor evaluate the player together in the locker room. He said he and the team doctors have never disagreed. He's seen two to three concussions a year.
The doctors assess how confused the player seems, but also measure balance and memory.
Grady said one improvement the NFL made is having athletic trainers observe and review play from high above the field. They look for behavior that might be a symptom of a head injury.
From his vantage point, Grady often doesn't even see how the injuries occurred. "When you're standing on the sidelines, you don't see the action very well unless the action happens right in front of you," he said.
He'll likely get a better view on television Sunday when the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers fight it out. It grabs his attention when a player is particularly slow to get up after a hit or seems confused: "I watch to see if the player stumbles around afterward."
He said the NFL has reduced concussions by making kickoffs start farther down the field. The ball usually ends up in the end zone, leading to fewer opportunities for players to run into each other. "It did reduce the number of collisions as a result of the ball being caught and run back every time," he said.
He had no ideas for other ways to make the game safer.
Grady said he hopes a time will come when doctors can predict how much head trauma a particular player can safely sustain before it's time to find another profession.
While he thinks the Panthers are fun to watch, he's partial to the Broncos' 39-year-old quarterback, Peyton Manning. "I'm a little bit older, so I'm going to be rooting for Denver," he said.
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