Pulse
Making Hockey Safer
Several years ago, Aynsley Smith, R.N., Ph.D., research director for sports medicine at Mayo Clinic, was at the Minnesota State Fair displaying the instrumented putter Mayo researchers used to measure grip force in golfers. Next to her was a young man from Rogers, Minnesota, Andy Blaylock, who was showing off his invention, a flywheel that functioned as a sort of treadmill for skaters. Smith, a kinesiologist, thought Mayo researchers might want to assess whether it was effective for training hockey players.
The contraption, which is essentially a polyethylene disk that spins like a giant phonograph record, enables skaters to practice crossover turns. More than half the time, hockey players are turning, Smith says.
The Mayo researchers had high school hockey players skate on the flywheel and afterward compared their physiologic measures with those of players who had trained on the ice and another group who had not trained at all. Smith is still analyzing the data, but she’s optimistic they’ll show the flywheel has potential, as skating on it is harder than skating on ice because the surface offers more resistance. “We know the hearts of the athletes who skated on the disk were beating faster,” she says. “It looks promising.”
Analyzing Injuries
The Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center and USA Hockey are jointly developing a catastrophic injury registry for ice hockey. The plan is to collect information on players at all levels, from youth to professional. “Catastrophic injuries” will be defined as those that occur during participation in ice hockey and result in death, cranial fracture, spinal fracture or dislocation with spinal cord involvement, complex concussion with permanent cognitive deficit, eye injury with permanent visual impairment, or a permanent disability resulting in a substantial reduction of physical ability. An injury reporting phone line (866/926-2563) and email address (hockeyinjury@mayo.edu) have been established.
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That Mayo should be testing a flywheel for hockey skaters is slightly less surprising when you consider that its Sports Medicine Center has long been looking for ways to make the sport known for its speed, collisions, and even violence safer. That research was launched about 15 years ago with a gift from former Minnesota North Stars owner Gordon Gund. The work is led by Michael Stuart, M.D., co-director of the Sports Medicine Center and chair of the safety and protective equipment committee for USA Hockey, and Smith, who has worked with hockey players at all levels. “It’s a very dangerous sport, but it can be so much fun,” Smith says. “There’s a big need to keep it safe.”
Their work has had a direct impact on the current generation of young hockey players in the state. About six years ago, Smith and Stuart helped Minnesota Hockey, the organization that governs youth hockey in the state, create HEP (Hockey Education Program), which promotes fun, skill building, and fair play in youth hockey.
One thing they encourage is having a practice-to-game ratio of 3:1 or 4:1. She explains that the risks to players during games are about 25 times higher than the risks during practices. And, she says, practices build skills and strength that make players less likely to get hurt.
HEP has also created an incentive for fairer play. If teams keep their penalty minutes under a certain level, they can earn fair play points that can go toward their end-of-the-year standing. “For five or six years, we’ve been tracking score sheets,” Smith says. “You can see a decrease in the most dangerous penalties.”—Carmen Peota
Helmets on the Hill
As a kid who learned to snowboard on Minnesota’s slopes, Wade Swenson took his share of spills. He knows that although it may not have looked cool, the helmet he wore on his runs may have saved him from a concussion. “I’ve always worn one, but I felt like I was in the minority,” says the Brooklyn Park native, who is now in his fourth year at the University of Minnesota Medical School. “It’s a concern when you see the number of youths who do not wear helmets and do tricks and jumps.”
Swenson’s experience and work to educate Easter Seals employees about traumatic brain injury inspired him to co-author a resolution that was introduced by the Minnesota Medical Association’s Medical Student Section at the 2009 annual meeting of the American Medical Association’s Medical Student Section.
The resolution called for the AMA student section to support the use of helmets for skiing and snowboarding and the education of physicians and patients about their importance. It also called for developing legislation requiring their use among youths. A similar measure had been brought forward by the resident section in 1997. “At that time, it was deemed that there was insufficient scientific evidence to support a mandatory helmet requirement,” Swenson says.
With the help of fellow fourth-year students Jessica Voight and Elizabeth Vogel, Swenson started looking at the studies that had been published since then. “We found a sizeable amount of research that demonstrated that there is a reduction of risk when wearing ski and snowboard helmets,” he says. One large study published in Injury Prevention in 2007 showed the use of helmets reduced the risk of injury by as much as 60 percent.
The Minnesota students’ resolution was adopted by the AMA Medical Student Section. A slightly modified version was adopted by the full AMA House of Delegates at its interim meeting in San Diego last month.
Swenson would like to see helmet use mandated. “It hopefully would prevent injuries that we would otherwise see,” he says.—Kim Kiser