The Cégep de Thetford (Thetford College) is proud to announce the innovative measures taken by their Therapeutic Staff in care of its sports teams in handling head injuries, including concussions in athletes comprising the Filons teams.

It is wrong to believe that concussions affect only professional athletes. Youths who participate in sports are also likely to be victims of head injuries. At the Cégep de Thetford, several impact sports are offered to students such as football, hockey and rugby. Since the risk of concussions among these athletes is very high, the Cégep de Thetford saw fit to develop a protocol providing superior and State-of the-Art management of their athletes.

Specifically, the Cégep in collaboration with the company Tekscan Inc., acquired the SportsAT™ Software, developed by the same firm in Boston. This system includes two components, a pressure measurement floor mat or platform, the MobileMat™, and the SportsAT software.

This system will allow staff to make a first assessment on balance and on cognition in all athletes before the official start of the season. The results of these tests will serve as a baseline. These evaluations will be repeated as result of a concussion or injury. The latest results may therefore be compared to the first results (baseline). This software will therefore help the therapeutic staff in documenting signs and symptoms, and to take the right decisions.

It is important to mention that the method for support of the athlete by the Therapeutic Staff of the Cégep de Thetford and the SportsAT system respond to the recommendations issued by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the National Athletic Trainers’ Association (NATA) and the International Symposium on Concussion Consensus Statement.

It was Dr. Norman Murphy who proposed this new system to the Staff at the Cégep de Thetford. Mr. Murphy has been collaborating for two years with the Cégep by teaching methods and techniques to help the athletes improve their academic and athletic performance.

Mr. Murphy has been working since 1999 as Consultant, Director of Product and Market Research & Development for the Medical Division at Tekscan. He helps and fine-tunes in the development of the force measurements and pressure mapping systems to improve biomechanical analysis and treatment of disorders and problems related to foot function, gait, posture, balance, sitting and positioning.

He has received numerous awards and honors such as the first prize for Excellence in Fundamental Research from the Edward Samson Orthopedic Program, the first prize for Excellence in Doctorate Thesis and the American Society of Biomechanics Research Award and Travel for his research work at Karolinska Institute, Stockholm. He shares his expertise with industrial and government establishments, educational institutions and manufacturers of orthopedic devices.

“Concussions in sports are a public health problem and a major concern for all sports at high risk”, says Alain Rajotte, in charge of the Cégep’s sports teams. “With such a game plan, the safety of the athletes is in good hands. We will extend this Protocol to all our teams in order to manage our athletes as they so deserve”.

Source : Édith Jacques

Conseillère en communication (Communications Advisor)

Cégep de Thetford

418 338-8591, poste 204

About this release:

The Cégep de Thetford shared this press release following a press conference discussing their new and innovative measures for handling concussions in their athletes.  The concussion management plan encompasses the use of Tekscan's latest software SportsAT.

The original press release was posted in French and translated to English.  Please forgive any language translation errors. To read the original  French version, click here.