WILMINGTON, NC (WECT) - High school football players are back in action. The annual Jamboree at Legion Stadium kicked off the season Friday night with a series of scrimmages between local teams.
Hard hits on the field are nothing new to high school football in our area – but this year, there's a new understanding of the dangers of concussions and a new push to test athletes before their even injured.
At Bodies in Balance Physical Therapy, Karen Lambert showed us how the physical therapists are using this machine to conduct baseline tests of athletes.
The machine moves to trick the body's brain, testing an athlete's balance.
The baseline test shows how the athlete's brain and body would respond to these tricks while healthy.
Then, if that athlete is injured, therapists would re-run the test. The new results would tell them when the athlete is ready return to the field.
Lambeth says research shows putting a player back on the field before they're fully healed is dangerous.
"We have seen affects as serious as death - which is known as second impact syndrome," she said. "That has a 50 percent mortality rate that occurs when a person is concussed a second time when the brain has not fully healed from the first one."
Lambeth said athletes can get the baseline tests from Body in Balance for $30. For more information, go to their website: http://www.binbpt.com/binbpt/Home_.html.
Therapists said they can also use the test after an injury to determine if an athlete is ready to go back to the field; however, they would just have to compare it to an average athlete without the baseline test.
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