An Important Piece Of Equipment

The Canada West men's hockey championship series gets underway tonight with the Alberta Golden Bears hosting the UBC Thunderbirds in what looks like an absolute beauty of a series. Whenever the top-two teams in any league or conference meet in a battle for supremacy, you know the hockey is going to be fast-paced with great plays and big saves. With the game being later than my witing of this piece, I'm not writing about the game action because tonight's game will see the Thunderbirds contributing in another way as they join forces with science while they play the game which could go a long way in helping doctors and players when it comes to diagnosing and understanding concussions in the future.

The game tonight will see the UBC Thunderbirds hockey players use a mouthguard that records data on all sorts of bumps and crashes in an effort to better understand the impacts of those hits, falls, and collisions! The study is led by Dr. Lyndia Wu, an expert in brain injury biomechanics at UBC's faculty of applied science, who developed a mouthguard with motion sensors in her PhD work at Stanford University. The mouthguards have been used in other sports already, and UBC hockey players will now wear a version specifically designed for hockey!

"We started a five-year collaborative study with the UBC Thunderbirds men's and women's hockey teams with two main research goals: to understand how the brain changes after a concussion in sports and how repeated impacts may lead to longer term brain changes," Dr. Wu stated in her UBC interview.

The mouthguards will be able to capture import data such as speed of hits and the direction the hit from which the hit came, making it an important tool for researchers as th sensor is held inside the mouth during play. Most sensors have been affixed inside the jersey or inside helmets, but having the sensors inside the player in the same cavity as the brain - the skull - should prove far more accurate data when determining the effects any hits will have on the brain.

"Severe hits to the head are what most people are aware of, but even milder hits may have significant effects if they happen multiple times over the years," says study co-principal investigator Dr. Alexander Rauscher, an associate professor in the department of paediatrics and the Canada Research Chair in Quantitative MRI. "Ultimately, we hope to learn how long it takes the brain to recover from a concussion. With this information we can let athletes know that they should take a break after they've had a certain number of hits, so that they do not risk ending up with long-term negative effects."

That might be the most important part of this study - the impact of all hits, not just the highlight-reel collisions between two players. We know that soccer players can experience concussions and/or concussion-like symptoms just from playing the ball with one's head, so the long-term impact of milder hits may still have a long-term effect on the brain. By having the UBC team focus on all hits as opposed to just significant hits, we may see more telling data and conclusions than ever before.

UBC Thunderbirds men's hockey head coach and former NHL defenceman Sven Butenschön had an astute assessment of what his players go through if they were to be diagnosed with a concussion.

"Let's say you're playing junior hockey or professional hockey," he stated, "you get a check to the head, you can isolate, you can relax and recover. Here at UBC, these players have midterms and exams, and they can't miss anything because they'll fall behind quickly with such a demanding academic load."

That's a real thing for those that may be unaware. American Amanda Kessel was forced to skip an entire year of school due to a concussion she sustained at the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Harvard University's Josephine Pucci, an Olympic teammate of Kessel's, left the school after suffering her third concussion. I can't imagine how anyone would function as a high-level student while being concussed, and, as Butenschön stated, the pressures of school on a concussed player only add to the frustration players feel when it comes to the injury.

The inclusion of the UBC Thunderbirds women's team may prove even more helpful as most concussion studies look at the effects of concussions in men. The problem is that we know that women sustain concussions more often than men in impact sports, yet there's very little data in that regard. As seen above, two prominent players were forced to skip significant time in their careers, so UBC's study is hoping to change that too.

"There's been not enough research on female athletes who've suffered a sport-related concussion, and so looking at and comparing to male athletes will potentially provide some insight into the sex differences that occur," says co-principal investigator Dr. Paul van Donkelaar, a professor in the school of health and exercise sciences at UBC's Okanagan campus. "This research will also help us provide some guidance in terms of allowing both male and female players to play hockey as safely as possible."

The study is just getting started with the mouthguards in the mouths of UBC players this weekend against Alberta, but both UBC teams will be able to add another set of data when they travel to Halifax and Charlottetown for the U SPORTS National Hockey Championships next weekend. The more data that the researchers can collect will certainly prove to be more beneficial for all in the long run, and that's precisely what Dr. Wu wants to see when it comes to concussion research.

"Concussion research really needs researchers, players and coaches to work closely together and come up with solutions that will benefit future generations of athletes," she stated.

CTV's Michele Brunoro covered the story for CTV News Vancouver, and here's her piece on this amazing five-year study that will hopefully help many players in the future when it comes to concussions.

While UBC is hoping for a win against the Golden Bears this weekend, the Thunderbirds men's and women's hockey teams have already won in a big way with the involvement in this study on concussions. With the data they'll return to the researchers, they'll be making the game safer for all players when it comes to concussions and long-term brain injuries, and that's a massive win in my books!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!