Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members.
I, too, would like to highlight a few key points as they relate to head trauma in sport.
As you already know, concussion is a complex injury caused by rotational motion of the brain. In hockey, there are four ways in which a player can be concussed by these rotational forces, namely, a shoulder or an elbow to the head, a collision with the boards, a collision with the ice or a puck to the head. I will return to this in a few minutes.
Concussion is not a new injury in sport. In the early days of head injury research, studies were concerned with what were then called “closed head injuries” sustained mainly in assaults and auto accidents. The injuries involved loss of consciousness without skull injury and the patient usually survived. These were concussions, and plenty of athletes sustained such injuries.
Today, concussion is defined by symptoms other than loss of consciousness, such as headaches, memory loss, motor dysfunction and other related signs and symptoms.
Because hockey players wear helmets to protect against catastrophic injury such as skull fracture, subdural hematoma and so on, there's an expectation that helmets should also play a role to protect against concussion. However, concussion in hockey—unlike in football—has many mechanisms, as I mentioned earlier. Reducing injury risk against all of these mechanisms is indeed a challenge.
CSA Group members have been working diligently to try to determine whether helmets and helmet standards can be modified to mitigate the concussive risk. This is not a trivial pursuit, as the conditions that cause concussion—namely, trauma induced by rotational motion of the head and the ensuing strain on the brain—are difficult to reproduce in a testing laboratory and are difficult to quantify as a safety metric. Work to find possible test conditions that are suitable for testing such injury-causing situations is ongoing.
For example, CSA Group, in collaboration with the University of Ottawa, undertook a research project to examine test protocols to help limit head rotation in hockey. After a full year of work, it was determined that although much was learned in regard to the different types of concussion-causing events, additional research is needed to learn more about mitigation and the ways to offer protection.
There are certainly opportunities to investigate improvement of the protective value of such equipment, especially with the study of these rotational forces and their role in concussions. We recommend that this research be continued and expanded.
Goaltenders are another group that has experienced an increase in concussion, and we recommend that research should be undertaken on this group's unique protective needs as well.
CSA Group is an established and experienced standards development organization with a history of developing important standards on protective equipment for various sports. These have helped reduce catastrophic head and eye injuries, but the complexities of concussion require more research to determine a role for such equipment.
We welcome the opportunity to work with members of this subcommittee, particularly where standards may be needed, to find a solution that leverages the work we have undertaken with the mandate of this committee.
Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members, for the opportunity to address you today. We will be happy to attempt to answer any questions you might have.