抖阴ap

Greenwood Village – Nick Greos is one teen for whom a concussion actually clarified his thinking.

Concussions also helped him win a national science scholarship and awards at every science fair in sight.

Last summer, the Cherry Creek High School science enthusiast was trolling for a good research project and considering, among other ideas, an analysis of teen athletes’ risk of concussion – a head injury that causes temporary loss of awareness or consciousness. Then, while playing around and scrambling on some rocks, he fell and hit his head on the ground.

“Ironic. I was messing around and smacked my head. It was really dumb,” Greos says. “But it solidified my interest in head injuries.”

The stakes are high for high schools because research has shown that adolescents with concussions who return to play sports and suffer a second head injury before fully recovering from the first are vulnerable to Second-Impact Syndrome, a rapid swelling of the brain that can end in permanent brain damage or death, neurologists say. Virtually all of the known second-impact cases have occurred in adolescent athletes, research has found.

Students with concussions seldom miss much school, Grandview High School psychologist and researcher Karen McAvoy says, even though full recovery can take weeks, even months.

“They look OK, but they’re struggling,” she says. “They’re not feeling well. They’re not thinking well.”

Greos, a senior, found that student athletes more than 7 pounds heavier than average were more likely to suffer concussions, as were those with hyperactivity and learning disorders. Students who had repeated a grade (and so were older than classmates) were one- fourth as likely to suffer a concussion while at play.

“I wanted to use the data to increase awareness of individual risks,” he says. For example, he believes coaches and other adults have generally wrongly assumed that lighter kids were in greater danger.

Greos’ work has won several big awards, and he was invited to attend the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Albuquerque in May.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates there are 300,000 sports-related concussions each year in the United States.

Greos used data from Mc Avoy’s three-year pilot study at Grandview High School, also in the Cherry Creek School District, where a football player suffered a fatal head injury in 2004.

Working with The Children’s Hospital in Denver, McAvoy is studying how neural-cognitive testing can help physicians and schools determine when students should return to play after suffering concussions. She followed 11 sports and roughly 1,000 high school athletes (whose identities have been protected). Of those, more than 100 suffered at least one concussion between fall 2004 and spring 2007.

She was not surprised to find that football players at Grandview, as is true nationally, had the most concussions. Next, in this order, were kids in girls soccer, boys soccer, girls basketball and boys basketball.

Probably a handful of Colorado high schools either use or are considering neural-cognitive testing, McAvoy says. Mc Avoy uses a 25- to 30-minute computer test that measures visual and verbal recall, processing speed and reaction time. She gets baseline information on healthy student athletes’ mental skills. After a head injury, students are re-tested periodically until their brains function as they did before the trauma.

“It’s one more piece of data for physicians, coaches, trainers and nurses – not the only determining factor,” McAvoy says. “We want to make sure that high school athletes have good recovery before returning to the playing fields.”

She says the pilot study has yielded a bonus.

“The beautiful thing for me is that this study will also educate teachers to make accommodations for students – exempt them from a test, extend an assignment deadline – until they have fully recovered.

“This work should widen the support system for students.”

Staff writer Electa Draper can be reached at 970-385-0917 or edraper@denverpost.com.