{"id":2816,"date":"2014-03-27T13:39:30","date_gmt":"2014-03-27T19:39:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/?p=2816"},"modified":"2014-03-31T07:08:15","modified_gmt":"2014-03-31T13:08:15","slug":"pt-professor-leads-doctoral-students-in-concussion-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/2014\/03\/27\/pt-professor-leads-doctoral-students-in-concussion-study\/","title":{"rendered":"PT professor leads doctoral students in concussion study"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SellsSmall\"<\/a>Dr. Pat Sells, associate professor of physical therapy, and a group of doctoral PT students from Belmont University are in the midst of conducting research on how multiple sub-concussive hits affect children ages 5 to 12.\u00a0 The research team has enlisted The Brentwood Blaze, a youth football organization, for study participants, and those efforts were recently featured in an article on the Brentwood Home Page<\/a>.\u00a0 The article, written by Jonathan Romeo, is linked here<\/a> with an excerpt below.<\/p>\n

Brentwood Blaze taking active role in youth concussion study
\nBy JONATHAN ROMEO Published: March 17, 2014<\/p>\n

With the spotlight on the impact of and long-term ramifications of concussions in professional sports, many high school teams and youth organizations are revisiting approaches to head injuries.<\/p>\n

The Brentwood Blaze, the city\u2019s youth football organization that fields teams for ages 4 through 12 with an average of 400 football participants, is an active participant in a study to help determine concussions\u2019 long-term effects on the youngest of athletes.<\/p>\n

A concussion — a disturbance in the brain function caused by a direct or indirect force to the head \u2013 is most commonly associated with one hard-hitting blow to the head. It results in a variety of non-specific signs and symptoms including headaches, unsteadiness, confusion and abnormal behavior.<\/p>\n

Dr. Pat Sells, a physical therapy teacher at Belmont University, has set out to specifically determine how multiple sub-concussive hits affect children ages 5 to 12.<\/p>\n

According to Sells, he and his doctoral students are the only known organization doing research to try to answer the question.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s lots of media attention about concussions and its impact, but one area that doesn\u2019t have as much research is youth sports,\u201d Sells said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur hypothesis is that any contact with the head causes the brain to move. So does a season of exposure to this kind of contact have any affects?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Collecting data from 60 youth football players throughout the 2013 season, Sells and his team performed a series of assessment tests. The evaluations included different balance tests, cognitive questions and a coordination examination.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we compared pre-season to post-season evaluations, we found no statistical difference. However, that was only from our first year and what we ultimately need is a larger data set,\u201d Sells said.<\/p>\n

Sells noted the study is an ongoing process with Brentwood Blaze, which will continue for years to come. As a part of the research, Sells and his students will compare findings with children from non-contact sports to see if they can detect any difference.<\/p>\n

Read the entire article linked here.<\/em><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Pat Sells, associate professor of physical therapy, and a group of doctoral PT students from Belmont University are in the midst of conducting research on how multiple sub-concussive hits affect children ages 5 to 12.\u00a0 The research team has … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chs","category-physical-therapy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2816"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2824,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2816\/revisions\/2824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}