Nice article. But I get into a tizzy about the negative leads. The opening of too many articles is about who would ever want to run 26.2 miles, blah, blah, gloom, doom, oddity.
Chinese take a closer look at UPMC concussion software Preparations for the 2008 Olympics in China might seem a world away from the banks of the Monongahela River.
We often tinker and ponder with Olympic and China element in advance of 2008.
Tony Tye, Post-Gazette, Dr. Yu Changlong, a key Chinese sports medicine official, visits the UPMC Center for Sports Medicine yesterday.
But Dr. Yu Changlong, a key sports medicine official in China, was thinking about the games yesterday during his visit to the on the South Side....
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Chinese take a closer look at UPMC concussion software
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
By Christopher Snowbeck, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Preparations for the 2008 Olympics in China might seem a world away from the banks of the Monongahela River.
Tony Tye, Post-Gazette
Dr. Yu Changlong, a key Chinese sports medicine official, visits the UPMC Center for Sports Medicine yesterday.
Click photo for larger image.
But Dr. Yu Changlong, a key sports medicine official in China, was thinking about the games yesterday during his visit to the on the South Side.
UPMC Center for Sports Medicine Yu heard about a software program that clinicians here use to monitor patients with concussions. Divers can suffer concussions when they hit the water, and Chinese officials think the UPMC system could help them protect the health of divers and other athletes.
Diving is big in China. During the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, that country's diving team won six of eight gold medals in those events, helping China win 63 medals overall, the third most behind the United States and Russia.
"We already made the decision we want to introduce this program," said Yu, who has visited Pittsburgh on several occasions to meet with his old friend and sports medicine colleague, Dr. Freddie Fu. "But we didn't talk about commercial things yet. We wanted to apply for a grant in China, and we'll see."
The Chinese deal is one of several that the creators of ImPACT -- a UPMC software system that assesses the effects of concussions -- hope to make this year.
The start-up company's product, launched commercially during 2002, is already being used by about 900 high schools, universities, professional sporting groups and sports medicine centers. But the company, which is based at the UPMC Center for Sports Medicine on the South Side, hopes to grow the market beyond the wide world of sports.
"We're creating a new standard of care around the injury of concussion," said David Hall, interim chief executive officer of the company. ImPACT has applications for both the military and emergency departments treating car accident victims, Hall said.
U.S. athletes suffer as many as 300,000 sports-related concussions per year, the company says. Most recover without problems, but sports medicine experts say that those who experience a second injury before the first has healed can develop chronic health problems such as headaches, sleep difficulties and personality changes.
With ImPACT -- which is the acronym for Immediate Post-concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing -- athletes at the beginning of a sport season take a 20-minute computerized test that measures brain processing, speed, memory and visual motor skills. Athletes who experience concussions are re-tested, and their results are compared with the baseline to determine when they've recovered.
The hope is that this objective information will help athletes and coaches make good decisions about when it is safe to play. Players and coaches often want to rush back on the field after an injury, and ImPACT can help them determine if that would be a wise move, said Michael W. Collins, one of the founders of ImPACT.
The system is used by teams in the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball. Professional groups pay $650 per year to license the software, while colleges and high schools pay $550 and $450, respectively, in annual fees.
Doctors pay per test administered. They can recover their costs from insurance companies that reimburse for post-concussion consultations.
Concussions don't show up on CT or MRI scans, although the tests are sometimes ordered for concussion patients to rule-out more serious problems.
Advanced MRI scanners called "functional MRIs" might detect the injuries, but those tests are more expensive than ImPACT. "It's a rocket. It's very high,'' Yu, the Chinese physician, said of functional MRI costs."
(Christopher Snowbeck can be reached at csnowbeck@post-gazette.com or 412 263-2625.)
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