2023-04-22 09:20:58
“Put the head, Kevin, the head! Oh, you’re not going to mess up your hair!“On Saturday morning on the junior set, encouraged by dad and the coach, little Kevin steels himself and receives the cannonball from the center forward on his forehead. Without damaging his hairstyle. full skull a kinetic energy of 250 joules: “The equivalent of a punch in the face by a 100 kg boxer“, calculated Professor Jean Chazal. This neurologist, former president of the medical commission of ASM Rugby Clermont, has spent more than forty years studying cranial trauma. Today, like several of his colleagues, he alerts on the dangers of concussions in sport, and not just the most violent ones.
After boxing, American football and rugby, football is in the crosshairs. From publication to publication, the suspicion is confirmed: professional players are more exposed than the general population to neurodegenerative diseases, in particular Alzheimer’s disease. Published on March 16 in the journal The Lancet public health, a new study conducted in Sweden has awakened fears. It covers 6,007 footballers who played, between 1924 and 2019, in the Swedish first division. During this period, 537 players (8.9%) received a diagnosis of neurodegenerative pathology, compared to 6.2% of control subjects, i.e. an increased risk of 1.46 of developing Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia syndromes . This excess risk was not found among the goalkeepers. These findings are in line, in part, with those of a Scottish study which concluded in 2019 at a risk multiplied by 3.5 for Alzheimer’s. Concussions following a head impact are in the sights. “It is established that repeated shocks, not necessarily very violent, promote the occurrence of lesions in the brain. This is called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)“, explains Professor Mathieu Ceccaldi, neurologist at AP-HM.
Invisible to scanner, diagnosable only post-mortem by autopsy of the brain, the effects of the accumulation of these “subconcussions” result, years later, in tremors, disorders of coordination, emotions and mood that can go as far as depression and suicide , cognitive and intellectual disorders and even early dementia.
England and Scotland have already taken action
In football, are these injuries the result of accidental collisions occurring during matches, or should we also be concerned about deliberate heading? According to a study carried out in the United Kingdom, a professional footballer carries out approximately 70,000 heads in his career, with specific training sessions during which he connects a hundred. Is it any coincidence that four of England’s 11 1966 World Cup winners died of dementia and a fifth was diagnosed with the same disease?
When in doubt, England begins to take action. Last July, the football federation banned headers at under-12s. In November, the Scottish federation limited training to the head game for all categories, including pros. In 2021, UEFA listed recommendations for youth football: use of a ball of an appropriate size and weight for the age of the players, minimal inflation, even foam ball for the youngest, and globally “reduction of head games drills to a minimum“.
In France, a concussion protocol has just been introduced for Ligue 1 players. Last May, a study carried out by the French Football Federation (FFF) on the mortality and causes of death of 9,693 French professional players between 1968 and 2015, confirmed an increased risk of dementia. But on its website, the FFF prefers to highlight the “overall lower mortality“Footballers, especially with regard to cardiovascular disease and cancer. In the land of Zidane and Boli, we are not about to give up the headbutt…
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