Documents filed by lawyers representing the National Football League (NFL) acknowledge that a minimum of one-fourth of players are likely to wind up suffering from dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease or other cognitive impairments after their careers are over, various media outlets are reporting.
Based on Reuters reporter Brendan O’Brien, the filing is really a summary of the results of the actuarial study which it had commissioned. They were submitted to the US District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania on Friday included in the league’s ongoing legal struggle with retired players suffering medical conditions associated with repeated blows to the head.
The report, which was compiled by the brand new York-based Segal Group in the NFL’s behest, concluded that 28 percent of the league’s “overall player population,” in addition to one-third of the 5,000 retired players that are the plaintiffs in an ongoing lawsuit from the organization, will be diagnosed with cognitive impairments during their lifetime.
The chances of professional football players dealing these problems “are materially greater than those expected within the general population,” the lawyers’ review of the study said, adding the athletes will develop these diagnoses “at notably younger ages compared to general population.” O’Brien said the research “appears to become probably the most definitive statement the NFL has yet made around the dangers of the sometimes violent sport.”
Likewise, Ken Belson of the New York Times said the documents are “the league’s most unvarnished admission yet the sport’s professional participants sustain severe brain injuries at far higher rates compared to general population,” and that the study’s results “appear to verify what scientists have said for years: that playing football increases the risk of developing neurological conditions.”
The concussion and head-injury issues in professional football players happen to be well documented, though in June, in-depth neurological examinations of 45 retired NFL players between the ages of 30 and 60 reportedly found that chronic brain damage was less prevalent within the former athletes than ever before believed.
That study used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) along with comprehensive neuropsychological and neurological examinations, interviews, blood tests and APOE (apolipoprotein E) genotyping and found that while there were isolated impairments in 11 of the patients, no players experienced dementia, dysarthria, Parkinson’s Disease or cerebellar dysfunction.
“Our results established that there were brain lesions and cognitive impairments in certain of the players; however the majority of the individuals within our study had no clinical indications of chronic brain harm to the degree that has been noted in previous studies,” explained lead author Dr. Ira R. Casson, a neurologist in the Long Island Jewish Medical Center and the Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine, both located in Ny.
However, the brand new statement filed on behalf of the league “clears up all the confusion and doubt manufactured over the years questioning the link between brain trauma and long-term neurological impairment,” Chris Nowinski, the chief director from the Sports Legacy Institute along with a longtime advocate of research into sports-related brain trauma, told the brand new York Times on Friday. “We came quite a distance since the days of outright denial.”
Nowinski added the number of former players who’re likely to develop dementia or similar cognitive ailments is “staggering,” adding the total does not even account for ex-players who go on to develop mood and/or behavior disorders or die just before developing the cognitive symptoms associated with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain condition that may only be identified during an autopsy.
Brad Karp, a lawyer representing the NFL, told Belson that the actuaries based their research around the medical diagnoses reported through the former players who had filed the lawsuit, thus inflating the findings from the study. Karp also told Reuters the Segal study is not a prediction of the number of players which will suffer such injuries, simply to demonstrate that the league might have enough money to pay all claims if that many injuries did occur.
“In 2013, the NFL agreed to pay a lot more than $760 million to settle a lawsuit through a lot more than 4,500 former players who had sued the league, accusing it of hiding the risks of injury to the brain while cashing in on the sport’s violence,” O’Brien said. In June, the league lifted a $675 million cap on payments to former players, and commissioned the Segal Group are accountable to be sure that the money set aside for that claims would be sufficient, he added.
