Playing it safe ‘Hurst team shows NFL new treatment protocol Story by Abby Badach All college students expect to have research projects under their belts before they graduate. But scoring a chance to present that research to the NFL? That’s taking it to the next level. Mercyhurst graduate student Jacob Gdovin and his faculty adviser, Bradley Jacobson, chair of the Sportsmedicine Department, spent last summer presenting their research regarding on-feld injury management of players with possible spinal injuries to the medical stafs of NFL teams. In collaboration with Mike Cendoma, CEO of Sports Medicine Concepts of Livonia, N.Y., the pair took their research to NFL neurosurgeons, athletic trainers, team physicians and paramedics in an all-day, hands-on laboratory presentation. They worked with the New York Giants, Houston Texans, New York Jets, Indianapolis Colts and the Dallas Cowboys – which happens to be the team Gdovin has rooted for since he was a boy. “I was there as a professional, so I had business to take care of,” he said. “But inside? I was like a little kid, just taking in the sights and sounds. It was a dream come true. I’m 23 years old, and I’m out teaching the medical staf for the Dallas Cowboys right on their home turf. It was quite an experience.”
Their research backed it up. “The amount of movement between the head and the torso was signifcantly less,” Jacobson said. “In essence, it’s a simple concept. Our research demonstrated a safer protocol to use instead of the all-or-nothing endeavor.” The faculty-student duo collected data at the Movement Analysis Laboratory at Shriners Hospitals for Children in Erie. The lab, under the direction of Kevin M. Cooney, PT, and biomechanist Dustin Bruening, Ph.D., uses high-tech motion sensor cameras that track refective markers placed on the body to measure the person’s movement. The highly accurate technology is similar to that used in video games, or the motion-capture equipment that transferred real humans’ dance steps to penguin waddles in the hit movie Happy Feet . “Skin-based anatomical marker tracking is the closest we can get to clinically replicating movement at this time,” Cooney said. “When the cameras track the markers, they collect very accurately, to the millimeter, the movement that occurred.” The research project stemmed from Gdovin’s required undergraduate baccalaureate research project – a mini-thesis of sorts, required of all sportsmedicine students since 2002. He collaborated with Jacobson from the beginning, with the goal of getting their fndings published. They submitted a manuscript to the Journal of Athletic Training , which was approved in 2012 and is slated for publication this summer. The pair plans to tackle more research together over the summer. Gdovin is completing a graduate assistantship with Cooney at the Movement Analysis Lab and will graduate from Mercyhurst this spring with a master’s degree in Organizational Leadership with a concentration in human resources. “He’s very professional and extremely thorough,” Cooney said. “He’s easygoing but disciplined and he’ll get the job done. He’s going to go places in his career.” In the fall, Gdovin will be back on campus to start graduate studies in exercise science. His dream job is to become an orthopedic surgeon for an NFL team. With the hands-on education he received at Mercyhurst, he says he’s confdent he’ll get there. “The OL program helped me study business management and leadership, giving me a sense of what it would be like to lead a team of future health professionals,” Gdovin said. “The exercise science program will help me learn the skills I’ll need in my feld, and help me to go on to succeed in medical school.” Jacobson said he’s grateful to be a part of a university that supports hands-on applications for students and faculty alike. “The administration here at Mercyhurst has been very supportive of providing opportunities through equipment, laboratories, research contracts for faculty members and research assistantships for students,” he said. “When you think of why we do research, it’s to beneft somebody. It’s benefcial for the community – and for the athletes whose health and well-being will be improved because of the improved healthcare that’s provided to them.”
Picture this scenario that’s bound to happen in a full-contact sport:
A football player takes a hard hit and falls to his back. His helmet comes of. The medical team rushes in, suspecting that he has injured his cervical spine – the vertebrae between his shoulders and the base of his skull. One wrong move could cause career-ending or life-threatening conditions, including paralysis. Medical professionals on the feld have to proceed carefully to minimize movement of the cervical spine as they care for the injured athlete. So, what’s the best way to treat such a delicate injury that minimizes movement of the afected area? Jacobson and Gdovin aimed to fnd out, collecting data on two diferent methods. The standard protocol is dubbed the “all-or-nothing endeavor.” Picture that downed football player again. He’s without a helmet, but his bulky shoulder pads are still on, which lift his torso up and tilt his head down toward the ground. The National Athletic Trainer Association recommends that the shoulder pads also be removed so the athlete’s neck can return to a more neutral position. Jacobson and Gdovin, however, proposed a diferent option, which they call the “pack-and-fll.” Under this protocol, the athlete’s shoulder pads stay on and the void underneath the head is flled with towels to reduce movement and keep the cervical spine in a neutral position. They thought that keeping the shoulder pads on would reduce movement of the afected area and help protect the injured athlete from further injury.
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