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American Morning

New Study Looks at How Dangerous Summer High School Football Practice Can Be

Aired August 12, 2002 - 08:31   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Football practice is an annual rite of summer, a much-hated preview of the regular season. Kids take to the field in helmets and pads, sometimes for two-a-day practices, just as the heat and humidity are sometimes their worst during the month of August. It can be a deadly combination. Remember the Minnesota Vikings player Korey Stringer, a big healthy guy who collapsed and died during the team's summer drills last year. Now a new study looks at how dangerous the whole idea of summer high school football practice can be.
And CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta is joining us from Atlanta to talk about that. Tough stuff. I remember doing this one summer, and I decided that I was not cut out to play football because it was just too miserable. But a lot of these kids do wind up getting hurt, don't they?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and it can be very miserable, and a lot of kids do play, Jack. It is the largest participatory sport now among high school students, 1.2 million kids playing, but the interesting numbers, as you're pointing out, Jack, 448,000 have injuries of some sort. Now granted some of those just might be cuts and scrapes. But some of them can be can be more serious, heat stroke, concussions, things like that. I want to talk about that as well.

Start with heat stroke, certainly school starts today in a lot of parts of the country, and these are the dog days of summer. Football practice also starts today, as we have been hearing, mid August, late September, high humidity, high temperatures, lots of exercising, usually in poorly conditioned bodies for the first time in a while.

Staying hydrated and wearing those uniforms can be a real problem. We have had heard about the death of Korey Stringer, as you pointed out.

Since '95, there has also been 15 deaths among high school students from heat stroke, heat exhaustion-type symptoms as well. So that is a problem.

There is certainly a precarious balance between wearing the uniforms you see there, along with the temperatures and the humidity that are outside now -- Jack.

CAFFERTY: What would you tell parents whose kids come to them and say I got to play football? I mean, is the risk great enough to say, I'm sorry, I'm not going to let you do this? GUPTA: You now know, it's interesting. I think a the lot of kids play football, and play football safe. I want to point out one of the big injuries I get concerned about as a neurosurgeon are concussions. Concussions certainly do affect about 5 percent of all high school players that play football. Certainly they have helmets. I have a helmet that I brought here.

I just want to point out a couple things about this. Certainly, the thinking on helmets was that a lot of the injuries that cause concussions come from the top of the head. That is not always the case. In fact, a lot of injuries can also come from the side of the head, as well as the jaw area down here. This helmet that I'm pointing out, this is one of many out there, but this particular helmet actually protects the jaw area. It actually extends out, so the kids can't get almost a knockout punch on their jaw, just like you'd see in boxing; they'd get that on their jaw knocking them out.

I don't know that I would recommend that they don't play football. I think there are a lot of things that kids can do, parents can do, to try and do that. We have got a list of some of the things here. Before the football season even starts, go ahead and get the physical exam, wear all the required safety gear, but sometimes if you need to wear shorts instead of the long, dark hot pants, that might be something that might be helpful. Stay hydrated. Start drinking before you feel thirsty. Warm up and stretch. That's also a good thing.

Don't play in pain. It's not a bravado thing. If you are hurt, there's a good chance you are going to get hurt more if you continue to play like that. Have first aid available. Some of the children's coaches, as we've been hearing so much about, Jack, can be aggressive. As a parent, that's one thing to do, is know your child's coach and get to see their style of play as well.

CAFFERTY: Talk to me for a minute, if you will, doctor, about Jason Priestley. Neurosurgery is your area of expertise. He was pretty badly busted up in that race car accident yesterday. Based on what you know about what happened to him, what's your prognosis?

GUPTA: Well, the prognosis looks good, no question about it. I want to point out a couple of things about this type of wreck. Jack, we are used to seeing the pretty dramatic wrecks on race car tracks where the cars tumble through the air and they land somewhere and the guy gets out fine. That's not surprising from a medical perspective.

Here's the reason. When the car is tumbling through the air like that, it's takes a lot longer to decelerate, to slow down, and that is it is quick deceleration that can be the real problem. That is why people were so concerned when Jason Priestley hit the wall head on, so concerned when Dale Earnhardt hit the wall head on last year. Certainly that quick deceleration can be a problem.

In Jason Priestley's case, he broke his feet. Oftentimes, when you break your feet, that's important, because it actually transmits pressure back up the spine. He actually fractured one of the bones in the middle of his spine, again, not an unexpected injury. The good news here is it doesn't look like any of the bones from that broken spine actually pushed on his spinal cord.

He also had a concussion, just probably from the quick deceleration, may have hit his head as well, broke his nose. Hearing from the doctors, he is at a great place; they are taking good care of him. It looks like his prognosis is quite good. He may need surgery, but it doesn't look like he will be paralyzed or have a significant lasting head injury.

CAFFERTY: That's good news. Thank you, doc.

GUPTA: Good seeing you, Jack.

CAFFERTY: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, with this morning's House Call.

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