Horizons Fall 2015

5 NSU HORIZONS personnel in county high schools to administer the tests. “The timing may have been a little self-serving in a way,” he said. “My daughter suffered two concussions within six months playing soccer for high school and club teams.” Frankhouser’s daughter, who has since recovered and now lives in Orlando, attended Dwyer High School in Palm Beach County, which has no pre-examination protocol. The banker said he was very impressed that Broward County and NSU had developed the testing and had opened a concussion clinic. “What a great program!” he said. Because of his daughter’s injury, Frankhouser has become very familiar with concussion research. He learned the sur- prising fact that head injuries are more common in women’s soccer than in men’s football or soccer. For one thing, the women have no helmets and head- to-head collisions are common. But, he said, “in the female physiology, the neck muscles supporting the head aren’t as strong as the males.” The point about unexpected head injuries is echoed by Andrew Kusienski, D.O. “Some of the freakiest head injuries can come from sports you don’t expect, like tennis, diving, sailing, even row- ing,” said Kusienski, former department chair of Sports Medicine at NSU’s College of Osteopathic Medicine, which runs the clinic. Kusienski’s position has been assumed by Beau Gedrick, D.O. After one incident, Gedrick learned a new expression. In rowing, you don’t want to be “catching a crab.” It means to put one’s oar in the water at the wrong time. The oar can flip parallel to the boat, instead of the correct position, perpendicular. The rower then must pull the oar in and over his or her head, not easy to do in a moving boat. A pretty serious head whacking can be the result, as it did in a patient Gedrick treated. Each head-injury patient who comes to the clinic is exam- ined by both doctors. Russo, the sports psychologist, looks for variations in the baseline readings, such as examining reaction time and memory. Gedrick, the clinician, looks for physical injuries, such as to the eyes, neck, and spine. A concussion, Russo points out, doesn’t have to come from direct force to the head. Any severe shaking—even a hit in the chest—can cause a brain-rattling that can result in a concussion. Nor is all damage from the big hits. “There are studies that show football players being exposed to close to 1,000 hits to the head during a typical year of training. These can be small incidents, but the overall cumulative effect can be dramatic,” said Russo, who has received training within the Veterans Administration and has served as director of Sports Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center—Center for