Teammates gather around Miami Dolphins midfielder Tua Tagovailoa following his injury on September 29 in Cincinnati. The NFL and NFL Players Association has agreed to amend the league’s concussion protocols.
Emilee Chinn / AP
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Emilee Chinn / AP
Teammates gather around Miami Dolphins midfielder Tua Tagovailoa following his injury on September 29 in Cincinnati. The NFL and NFL Players Association has agreed to amend the league’s concussion protocols.
Emilee Chinn / AP
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. – The NFL and NFL Players Association has agreed to amend the league’s concussion protocol following a joint investigation into league procedures following the Miami Dolphins midfielder Tua Tagovailoa injured in a game against the Buffalo Bills last month.
The league and the players’ union said in a joint statement on Saturday that the outcome of the Tagovailoa case “was not as intended when the Protocol was drafted.” As a result, language that addresses balance/stability anomalies has been added to the league’s list of symptoms that can keep players from getting back into the action.
During the first half of the September 25 game against Buffalo, Tagovailoa was hit by a blow from Bills quarterback Matt Milano, sending him to the ground. He seemed disoriented afterwards and tripped when trying to get up.
Tagovailoa was immediately taken to the locker room and given NFL concussion protocol, after which he was freed from any head injuries. He started the third inning, drawing criticism from viewers as to why he was allowed back into the game.
The NFL and NFLPA said they reviewed the video and jointly interviewed members of the Dolphins medical staff, lead athletic coach, Booth ATC Spotter, Unaffiliated Neurological Injury Consultant, and Tagovailoa.
They found that Tagovailoa didn’t show any signs or symptoms of a concussion during an examination of his dressing room, for the remainder of the game or throughout the following week. But as soon as he took the blow from Milano, engine instability emerged.
After the game, Tagovailoa and Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said the quartet had suffered a back injury earlier in the game during a sneak attack.
The review said Tagovailoa told medical staff that he aggravated his back injury during the match in question and that the back injury caused him to stumble. It also said paramedics determined that gross motor instability was not caused by a concussion.
In their statement Saturday, the NFL and the players’ union said there was no QB back examination in the concussion test, but that they “instead relied on prior testing conducted by other members.” conducted by medical personnel.” It was later concluded that a back injury was the cause of Tagovailoa’s instability.
New protocol related to “ataxia”
As a result of the joint investigation, the federation and the federation agreed to change the federation’s concussion protocol to include the term “ataxia”. In the statement, they define ataxia as “an abnormality in balance/stability, motor coordination, or speech dysfunction caused by a neurological problem.”
Ataxia has replaced the term “gross motor instability” and has been added to the list of symptoms that prohibit players from returning to the game. Others are confusion, amnesia and loss of consciousness.
“Protocols exist to establish a high standard of concussion care for each player,” the union and federation said in a statement, “whereby every medical professional involved in the examination has To that end, the parties remain committed to continuing to evaluate our Protocol to ensure it reflects the cautious approach intended to evaluate disease. player-person about potential head injury.”
On October 1, the union fired Unaffiliated Neurological Injury Consultant, who handled Tagovailoa’s situation in the game.
Jeff Miller, the NFL’s executive vice president of health and safety oversight, said in a virtual press conference Saturday that he believes this is the first time a UNC has been fired and the NFL does not support the decision. sack him.
Less than a week after the injury, Tagovailoa started the game against the Cincinnati Bengals in Thursday night’s game. He suffered a concussion in the first half after taking a hard holster, and displayed a fencing reaction after the terrifying blow. He was carried off the field on a stretcher and immediately taken to the hospital. He remains in concussion protocol and will miss Sunday’s game against the Jets.
Dr. Allen Sills, the NFL’s Chief Medical Officer, said that under the league’s revised protocol, Tagovailoa will be diagnosed with a concussion on September 25 with ataxia, thus leaving him with a concussion. ineligible to return to that match.
Sills said there is no exact timetable for a return for a player diagnosed with a concussion, but it would be “extremely unlikely” for a player diagnosed with ataxia to be able to compete. match on Thursday night. The average length of time off with concussion is nine days, he added.
Sills also implies that it is difficult to definitively diagnose concussion. He mentions that blood and saliva tests can make testing for concussions more accurate.
Commissioner Roger Goodell said at a fan forum in London on Saturday that the NFL would make “one or two changes” to its concussion protocol.
McDaniel, asked repeatedly in the days following the incident about the decision to let Tagovailoa return, stressed his confidence in the team’s ability to handle the situation.
“This is a player-friendly organization that I’ve made very clear from the beginning,” McDaniel said last week, “that my job as a coach is for the players. I takes that very seriously, and no one else in the organization has strayed from that.”
