Julian Bailes, MD, Chair of the Joint Section’s Committee on Sports Medicine, was the Course Director, along with Mark Lovell, a Neuropsychology Consultant to the National Football League, and Arthur Day, MD, the former Sports Medicine Committee Chair, for this excellent 200- registrant course. The meeting, organized by Allegheny University of the Health Sciences, began with presentations on “Spine and Nerve Injuries in Athletes” by several neurosurgeons, including Mark Hadley, MD, Dr. Day, Charles Tator, MD, Dave Kline, MD, Jack Wilberger, MD, and Richard Douglas, MD.
An in-depth symposium followed on “Neuropsychological Assessment of Athletes”, and the last session covered the important area of “Concussion in Athletes,” and included concussion classification and concussion guidelines, with papers delivered by Joseph Maroon, MD, Robert Cantu, MD, Tom Gennarelli, MD, and Ralph Dacey, MD. There was an important panel discussion on the Professional Athlete’s Perspective, with National Football League players including Lynn Swann, Harry Carson, Merril Hoge, and Mike Tomczak.
The Sports Medicine Committee is performing the important function of interfacing with the sports medicine community at large, which includes not only injured athletes, but also professional and amateur leagues, athletic trainers, and other medical and non-medical organizations and specialists involved in the treatment of athletes and the prevention of athletic injuries. All of these groups and individuals benefit from the strong input from individual neurosurgeons and from organized neurosurgery. This is an area in which neurosurgeons and neurosurgery perform a real public service. Congratulations to Dr. Bailes for waving the neurosurgical flag high with this course.
Trauma Section and Joint Section on Spine Launch Pilot Study of Early Decompression of Acute Cervical Cord Injury in 14 Centers
By Charles H. Tator, MD, PhD
Principal Investigator
The Joint Section on Neurotrauma and the Joint Section on Surgery of the Spine and Peripheral Nerves are co-sponsoring a pilot study organized by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to determine the feasibility of a larger randomized control trial of early decompression. The study will be performed in a small number of patients with acute cervical cord injury admitted to their centers and then entered into the early decompression protocol. McMaster University is the Statistical Coordinating Center and the University of Toronto is the Clinical Coordinating Center for this trial. The study officially got underway on October 1, 1996, with participating neurosurgeons in 14 centers.
| Investigator | Location |
|---|---|
| Edward Benzel, MD | Albuquerque, NM |
| Brian Cuddy, MD | Charleston, SC |
| Donald Cooney, MD | Washington, DC |
| Michael Fehlings, MD and Mahmood Fazl, MD | Toronto, ONT |
| Richard Fessler, MD | Gainesville, FL |
| Barth Green, MD | Miami, FL |
| Patrick Hitchon, MD | Iowa City, IA |
| Dennis Maiman, MD | Milwaukee, WI |
| Larry Marshall, MD | San Diego, CA |
| Bruce Northrup, MD | Philadelphia, PA |
| Steven Papadopoulos, MD | Ann Arbor, MI |
| Volker Sonntag, MD | Phoenix, AR |
| Frank Wagner, MD | Sacramento, CA |
| Jack Wilberger, MD | Pittsburgh, PA |
These centers were chosen on the basis of their experience in conducting clinical trials in spinal cord injury in NASCIS-3 or the GM-1 trials.
The Pilot Study aims to determine whether decompression can be diagnosed by MRI or CT myelography and then treated by traction alone, surgery alone, or both within the 8-hour trauma-to-treatment time window. This timing is the only confirmed trauma-to-treatment interval in the spinal cord injury field and was established by the NASCIS-2 trial with methylprednisolone. Patients must have cervical cord compression fully documented prior to treatment and then must have decompression accomplished by 8 hours after trauma.