Head Injury Potential and the Effectiveness of Headgear in Women’s Lacrosse

Abstract

Over the past 10 years, lacrosse has grown increasingly popular, making it one of the fastest growing team sports in the country. Similar to other sporting activities, head injuries in lacrosse can and do occur, and the number of lacrosse-related head injuries has increased in recent years. In women's lacrosse, protective headgear is not required, but U.S. Lacrosse and the American Society for Testing and Materials are currently working to develop a headgear standard for the women's game. In the interim, some female lacrosse programs and individual players are wearing soft headgear during play. The effectiveness of this headgear is unknown. Testing was conducted to better understand the material properties of various types of headgear that may be used in lacrosse and the effect of this headgear on head impact response and head injury potential. For the evaluation of head impact response, an instrumented Hybrid III anthropomorphic test device (ATD) was impacted on the side of the head with lacrosse balls and the front and side of the head with a lacrosse stick. The linear and rotational impact response of the head and corresponding acceleration-based injury metrics are reported. Testing was then repeated with the ATD wearing different types of headgear. Tested headgear included a men's lacrosse helmet and two brands of commercially-available soft headgear. For the higher velocity ball impacts, there was no statistically-significant difference in the measured linear and rotational response of the head for the no headgear and soft headgear test conditions. For the lower velocity ball impacts, there was a small, yet statistically-significant, reduction in head linear acceleration for one of the soft headgears tested in comparison to the no headgear test condition, but there was not a statistically-significant difference in the rotational impact response with this headgear. These results indicate that the soft headgear would not be effective in reducing head injury potential during higher velocity ball impacts, such as ball speeds associated with shooting in women's lacrosse. The men's lacrosse helmet reduced both the linear and rotational response of the head for the higher and lower velocity ball impacts. Material testing showed that the padding in the hard helmet exhibited larger strain energy than the padding within the soft headgears when tested in compression. These results correlate with the larger reductions in head accelerations during ball impacts by the hard helmet. For the stick impacts, there were no statistically-significant differences in the lateral impact response of the head for the helmeted and soft headgear test conditions in comparison to the no headgear test condition, but there were statistically-significant, albeit small, differences in the frontal impact response of the head. The similar impact responses of the head during the stick impacts with and without headgear can be attributed to the relatively low severity of these impacts and the characteristics of the impactor.

A New Model of Repetitive Traumatic Brain Injury in Mice

“…The scaled peak linear parameter was lower than that for reported human brain concussion tolerances generated by the instrumented helmet data (Guskiewicz et al, 2007;Rowson et al, 2012) and below the reported linear acceleration within the range of concussion (61-144 g) (Rodowicz et al, 2015;Clark and Hoshizaki, 2016;Clark et al, 2018) but was higher than the head accelerations in volunteer soccer heading (23.5 g) (Shewchenko et al, 2005). The scaled peak angular velocity and peak angular deceleration were much higher than the reported threshold levels in the range of 3,958-12,832 rad/s 2 that were developed from the analysis of sports collisions resulting in a human concussion (Pellman et al, 2003;Rowson et al, 2012;Rowson and Duma, 2013;Mcintosh et al, 2014;Rodowicz et al, 2015;Clark and Hoshizaki, 2016). Considering that linear kinematics predict biological outcomes better than they do angular kinematics (Namjoshi et al, 2017) and that clinical concussion may occur under many different situations, the biomechanics in our model seemed to be reasonable.…”

Assessing women's lacrosse head impacts using finite element modelling

“…Peak linear and rotational acceleration have been shown to have a low correlation to injury (Kleiven, 2007;Zhang et al, 2004), and it has been suggested that the resulting acceleration loading curve created from an impact, rather than the peak resultant accelerations, is more representative of actual brain injury . As such, the findings of Rodowicz et al (2015) and which solely examine peak linear and rotational acceleration may not be representative of actual brain response. Finite element modelling allows for the interpretation of linear and rotational acceleration curves and how they influence the response of brain tissue to an impact.…”

“…Some experts contend that the use of helmets is unnecessary (Goldenberg and Hossler, 1995;Harmer, 1993), while others encourage the use of helmets (Diamond and Gale, 2001;Lincoln et al, 2007;Otago et al, 2007). Recently, studies have examined the potential for helmets to reduce linear and rotational acceleration of a headform for women's lacrosse head impacts Rodowicz et al, 2015). Rodowicz et al (2015) assessed both soft headgear and a men's lacrosse helmet under stick and ball impacts.…”

“…Recently, studies have examined the potential for helmets to reduce linear and rotational acceleration of a headform for women's lacrosse head impacts Rodowicz et al, 2015). Rodowicz et al (2015) assessed both soft headgear and a men's lacrosse helmet under stick and ball impacts. It was found that soft headgear was ineffective at reducing the potential for head injury from high velocity ball impacts, such as those associated with shooting in women's lacrosse, whereas men's lacrosse helmets proved to be effective at reducing the risk of head injury for all ball impact speeds.…”

“…It was found that soft headgear was ineffective at reducing the potential for head injury from high velocity ball impacts, such as those associated with shooting in women's lacrosse, whereas men's lacrosse helmets proved to be effective at reducing the risk of head injury for all ball impact speeds. For stick impacts, both soft headgear and men's lacrosse helmets were relatively ineffective at reducing the response of the head, with only small differences being seen for frontal impacts (Rodowicz et al, 2015). assessed the ability of men's lacrosse helmets to decrease linear and angular acceleration for different striking techniques in women's field lacrosse.…”