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News Nuggets, 06.16.04
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Compiled from staff reports and electronic dispatches

Crucial vote looms as heart center clears committees

A pair of House panels signed off on funding Tuesday for East Carolina University's long-planned Cardiovascular Diseases Institute and a major overhaul and upgrade of the cancer center at UNC-Chapel Hill.

A contingent of ECU officials, led by Chancellor Steven Ballard, and prominent representatives of the Greenville business community spent the day in Raleigh shoring up support for the cardio center and monitoring the progress of the bill.

Two members of the ECU delegation indicated Tuesday night they viewed the votes in the House Appropriations Committee and the House Finance Committee as positive steps in a logical process, but they each noted that final passage in the chamber is contingent upon a vote expected to take place some time this afternoon by the full House.

Altogether, the House panels authorized more than $330 million dollars in appropriations for the Greenville and Chapel Hill projects as well as more recently-formulated capital requests from three other campuses in the UNC System.

The total appropriation would include the $240 million for the cardio and cancer centers that received Senate approval last month and additional tens of millions for projects at UNC-Charlotte, UNC-Asheville and Elizabeth City State University.

ECU officials have said in the past the $60 million sought by the school would be used for a research and treatment center, supplementing an additional $150 million private investment by University Health Systems for a 120-150 bed heart hospital.

The capital items passed Tuesday by the House panels that were not included in the Senate bill include a bioinformatics center at UNC-Charlotte, a wellness center at UNC-Asheville and a school of pharmacy Elizabeth City State University.

If the bill clears the House today in its present form, the House and Senate Conference Committee will ultimately be relegated with the task of cobbling together compromise legislation.

Much of Tuesday's drama revolved around how the appropriation would be paid for. The Finance Committee voted to use money from North Carolina's share of the national tobacco settlement with cigarette companies, but the Appropriations Committee overturned that provision in favor of a less contentious course of financing.

During the course of the deliberation in both the Senate and House, ECU officials have relied on the school's Purple Alert initiative to keep alumni and other constituents informed of the cardio center's fortunes in the legislature and to encourage allies to help make the case with their legislators on behalf of the project.

Indications are that school leaders are counting on those advocacy efforts to continue as today's House vote approaches and in the period leading up to any House and Senate Conference Committee deliberations to resolve the final shape of the legislation.

Concussions more prevalent than thought

INDIANAPOLIS — Most serious head injuries in college football are never reported to team trainers or coaches because the players don't think their symptoms are severe enough to indicate a concussion, according to a new Indiana State University study.

That lack of knowledge could be putting athletes at risk for more severe injury, or even death, researchers say.

"When your head is messed up, you may not know it yourself," said JoEllen Sefton, a doctoral fellow in sports medicine who surveyed 457 players, 38 coaches and eight trainers from eight NCAA Division I-A, I-AA and II colleges.

Coaches, players, athletic administrators and medical personnel have long known the risks of injury to the brain. But Sefton's 2002 survey, to be presented Saturday at the National Athletic Trainers Association meeting in Baltimore, indicates nearly three of every four concussions go unreported.

A concussion is a blow to the head that jostles the brain and can cause brain swelling, blood vessel damage and even death. Symptoms can include headache, confusion, loss of consciousness and nausea.

A study funded in part by the NCAA and published last November by the Journal of the American Medical Association found college players who suffer concussions are more prone to another one, especially if they return to the field too soon. They also become slower to recover from blows to the head, researchers said.

"There's a condition called second impact syndrome," said Mitchell Cordova, chairman of the athletic training department at Indiana State. "An athlete takes a subsequent hit that may be less severe than the first hit but receives a greater injury because the symptoms from the initial incident are not completely resolved."

Several pro football players have ended their careers early after suffering multiple concussions, including quarterbacks Troy Aikman of the Dallas Cowboys and Steve Young of the San Francisco 49ers.

The Indiana State study, published in the April-June issue of the Journal of Athletic Training, gave players a list of symptoms and asked them to identify which were associated with concussions and which were not. It asked players how many of those symptoms they had experienced, and how often they had reported them, after a hit in the head.

Sefton said those surveyed suffered symptoms consistent with concussion 391 times — 21 percent of them more than once. But 72 percent of the symptoms were not reported, primarily because the athlete did not think the injury was serious, she said.

The study also indicated many players had misconceptions about what signals a concussion.

For example, some players mistakenly thought they could not have suffered a concussion because they did not have a headache.

"If they had trouble sleeping at night or were depressed or had emotional outbursts — all symptoms of concussion — if they didn't know those were symptoms, they might not connect that with the hit in the head they had that day," Sefton said.

She said the more athletes know about concussions, the more likely they are to report them.

"We need to develop an education program for athletes for head injuries," she said. "We have them for drug abuse, we have them for nutrition and eating disorders, for smoking, but we don't have anything for head injuries."

News Nuggets are compiled periodically from staff, ECU, Conference USA and its member schools, and from Associated Press and other reports. Copyright 2004 Bonesville.net and other publishers. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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