Sport science award for concussion research

Master's degree research on concussion wins Sport Science Association of Alberta award

Jane Hurly - 25 February 2013

Master's degree research on concussion wins Sport Science Association of Alberta (SSAA) award for best abstract for Nicole Lemke

Nicole Lemke is passionate about sport and, as an athletic therapist, she likes to keep players on the field. But there are times when it's not healthy for them to carry on playing. Often that's when they're concussed. It's her master's degree research into the ramifications of concussion, working with her supervisors, sports medicine physician Connie Lebrun and neuropsychologist Marty Mrazik, that garnered the attention of the Sport Science Association of Alberta - and netted a graduate student research award for Lemke that enabled her to fly to Honolulu last week to present her research at the 2nd Pan Pacific Conference of Medicine and Science in Sport.

Lemke is a 2003 Bachelor of Physical Education graduate of the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation and one of the last of the graduates of the degree, that, at the time offered students the opportunity to study at both the University of Alberta and Mount Royal University which carried a specialty in athletic therapy.

Working with Football Alberta's provincial teams for the past decade, Lemke noticed an increase in cases of concussion and wanted to know more about getting athletes well again. "I saw a lot of concussions happen, but they're not as prevalent as ankle sprains, for example," she says, then adds, "To put it into perspective, our football team of 65 athletes saw three concussions through the whole season - but, concussions are also more serious than an ankle sprain. With concussion it's the brain that's injured, so it's a lot more complicated."

"I've joined Connie Lebrun and Marty Mrazik in their work doing baseline testing of varsity athletes - something they've been doing for three years," says Lemke, adding that their work entails establishing baseline data on the health of the athlete. "We ask them about 22 different symptoms." she says, "At baseline they should be close to 100 per cent, and have relatively few of these symptoms, which are graded on a scale from zero to six. If they get a concussion during the season, we compare their score to that baseline and, essentially, they cannot return to their sport until they're back to baseline. The idea is that if an athlete should become injured, we'll know at what point they can re-enter (their sport) safely."

Working with Golden Bears and Pandas athletes in the contact and collision sports - basketball, hockey, rugby, soccer, wrestling and football, Lemke has been collecting data, tracking the athletes, doing baseline tests, a return-to-play test and a three-month follow-up test with athletes who were injured in the fall. "We have the information on computer, but we have a folder on the bench as well, so if anything happens to an athlete on the field or court, we have the information about their health right there," she says.

Concussions, she notes, "are still only 3-5 per cent of the injuries that therapists see. The majority of the injuries I work on are still orthopedics: shoulders, knees and ankles." And while the NCAA's statistics for concussion are down in the last couple of years, Lemke chalks this up to better education and new knowledge about concussions, to which sports bodies have responded with rule changes that are more protective of athletes. "In football, for example, they've changed the kick-off rule. They moved the guys five yards up so they're not running as far and fast and therefore shouldn't be hitting as hard," she says.

Lebrun is thrilled to see her master's student receiving this sports science award. "Over the past year, Nicole has been instrumental in helping to submit two grant proposals to support this project - both of which were successful. The first one was also through the SSAA, and the second one was through the Canadian Academy of Sport and Exercise Medicine (CASEM). She has two upcoming podium presentations, at the CASEM Annual Meeting in Whistler in April, and at the Sport Injury Prevention Research Symposium immediately preceding it. Clearly, she's making her mark in this field."

Exercise physiologist Gordon Bell, an SSAA board member, says he's pleased to see sport science getting this type of boost. "The type of research that Nicole is doing for her master's thesis within the research programs of Drs. Lebrun and Mrazik is really a great example of sport science research and the importance it can have for the health and performance of an athlete," he says. "It is a great accomplishment that the Sport Science Association of Alberta recognized Nicole with an award for her graduate research."

To Lemke, the award and the recognition of sport science research are welcome recognition, but she's focused on where she wants her research in this field to take her. "I'd like to be able to learn more about how we stop younger athletes in particular from getting concussions and, if they are concussed, know how to return them to their sport safely." It's the kind of knowledge safety net that should make parents of young athletes in contact sports happy and bring a new level of scientific understanding to the field of an injury that can have serious, lasting repercussions.