How children can be helped to recover from concussion
Studies have shown that infants, children, and adolescents are at a greater risk of traumatic brain injuries than any other age group. Professor Vicki Anderson from Melbourne's Murdoch Children's Research Institute spoke to Ingrid Hipkiss.
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RNZ News
3 days ago
- RNZ News
Young people speak on the impact of having concussions
sport health about 1 hour ago An expert in traumatic brain injuries is calling for consistent protocols when dealing with concussions in schoolyard sport to prevent debilitating long-term impacts. While there's greater awareness about the risks associated with concussion, Pat Hopkins from the Laura Fergusson Brain Injury Trust said that too often, head knocks are treated differently if they occur during lower-level sports. Checkpoint spoke to young people who've been concussed playing sport at school and university, and continue to suffer consequences for years afterwards. Bella Craig reports.
RNZ News
3 days ago
- RNZ News
More needed to tackle schoolyard sport concussions, expert says
Photo: NICK VEASEY/ SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / AFP Warning: This story discusses suicide. An expert in traumatic brain injuries is calling for consistent protocols when dealing with concussions in schoolyard sport to prevent debilitating long-term impacts. While there's greater awareness about the risks associated with concussion, Pat Hopkins from the Laura Fergusson Brain Injury Trust said that too often, head knocks are treated differently if they occur during lower-level sports. Checkpoint has spoken to young people who've been concussed playing competitive sport throughout school and university and continue to sufferer the consequences for years afterwards. They want others to know about the the mental and physical toll that concussion can have and the gruelling rehabilitation process that's required. Moses Bygate-Smith was in a freak accident while trialling for a national ice hockey team in 2018. He was told he had a severe concussion, his third in 18 months. In the months that followed his injury, he said the symptoms took over his life. "If there was even just a pamphlet, for example, with a couple of words, or even just a short sentence on it, I couldn't read that sentence without getting an excruciating headache. When I'd have conversations with people, I would be halfway through a sentence, and I would actually forget what I was saying." He said he experienced depression and anxiety during the months of his recovery. "There were thoughts of sort of suicide at that time just because I guess it was very hard to think that potentially this was going to be the state of my life, for the for the rest of my life." He was unable to read, listen to music or exercise as he grappled with giving up the sport he dedicated so much of his life to. "Being sort of a person that lived and breathed ice hockey as much as the concussion was hard. I think what was a driving factor of the difficulty was the identity crisis that sort of comes with the changes you have to make from a head injury, especially for people [who] are athletes or involved with sports." Bygate-Smith has come a long way since his injury and has gone on to complete a master's degree in sports science. But the impact of his injury lingers to this day. Georgia Hendry grew up racing horses competitively and suffered multiple concussions while riding. She'd find it hard to study and struggled with exhaustion. After a car crash in 2021, things became even worse. "I went to the doctors, and I was like something's not right. I can't even sit in a lecture and obtain information; I'm having to go home and rewatch the lectures and then pause the lectures so I could keep up with the person speaking." She said not being able to play sport impacted her mental health. She's come a long way since her injury and is now working full time as a preschool teacher. But she said the recovery process was long and gruelling. "It's not an easy recovery and it's a very long recovery. It's not like a broken bone, it's your brain." Hopkins said the Christchurch-based Laura Fergusson Brain Injury Trust is seeing three times more clients than a few years ago. "The recognition of concussion has improved a lot over recent years and the awareness, so I think people and things like the blue card system in rugby have helped. "It's not just 'oh you'll be right' anymore, it's still out there a little bit, but it's changed." But she said it's in lower grade sports, where more could be done to protect younger people from sustaining concussions. Currently, the cost of seeing a doctor deters many people from getting checked. Hopkins said she wants consistent protocols for schoolyard and lower-level sports. "The kids just want to play and so it sometimes takes a strong coach to say, 'well, no, you can't play, you may be feeling okay, but it hasn't been enough time since your injury." "If the protocols and rules were more established that might help that." Over the past four years, new concussion injury claims lodged to ACC have increased from just over 39,000 in 2022 to 47,000 in 2024. There's been over 24,000 concussion injuries claimed so far this year. A claim to ACC may include multiple injuries. ACC estimates 30 percent of concussions go unreported. The highest number of concussion claims are from falls, followed by sports-related injuries. If it is an emergency and you feel like you or someone else is at risk, call 111. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
3 days ago
- RNZ News
Chatham Islands building materials rusting 22 times faster than inland rural NZ
BRANZ senior scientist Zhengwei Li. Photo: Supplied The headline and topline of this story have been corrected to show the rusting rate is 22 times faster, not 50. Building materials on the Chatham Islands are rusting up to 22 times faster than inland rural NZ, according to research by locals and the Building Research Association. Surrounded by sea and exposed to the elements 800 kilometres out in the South Pacific, the working theory is that salt-laden winds are to blame. Denis Prendeville, a sixth-generation Chatham Islander, had spent 23 years building fences for the Department of Conservation - so he knew well the island's rugged environment . "A hundred years ago, it was forested," he said. "Well, through clearing bush for grazing, the wind has actually finished off a lot of the remaining bush on the Chathams, so it's quite bleak in places." Now, reforestation work was underway, and pests needed to be kept out. "You haven't got anything if you haven't got a fence," Prendeville said. But using all the normal materials, a fence on the coast could rust through in seven years. Prendeville had learned ways around it - using thicker wire, and plastic inserts to keep metal from touching metal, which were the areas which tended to rust first. In the swamps, he usually skipped the bottom two lines of wires, as they tended to rust through in a year. But across the board, things needed replacing more often . "The expense on the Chathams, well you just double it to the New Zealand standards," Prendeville said. Building Research Association (BRANZ) team leader Dr Anna de Raadt said the working theory was that the salt-laden winds could be to blame, with gales picking up the sea spray and throwing it onto fences and roofs, speeding up that rusting process. She said their research has been a collaboration with the community. "Talking to the people living there, it's amazing to hear stories," she said. "One of them really brought it home for me. They were saying, 'Oh we buy a car, bring it over from the mainland to the island, and within three years it's rusted out.'" Scientists set up four racks of metal squares around the island, and left them out in the elements for a year. The metal testing samples. Photo: Supplied De Raadt explained one set was set up at a local school. "And it was really fantastic to see their eyes light up and actually hold the samples and look at them, because they'd see something like a beautiful, shiny metal coupon, and they'd compare it to one looking like a swiss cheese." The results showed corrosion levels were off the charts. An unprotected carbon steel plate, a millimetre thick, was completely gone within a year, despite lasting more than 50 in rural inland areas. BRANZ established more sites, and confirmed the results - the corrosion rates were among the highest defined by international standards. Carbon steel, used in common building products like beams, framing, and nuts and bolts, corroded at a rate more than 22 times faster than inland New Zealand, and more than three times the rate at our harshest coastal sites, like Oteranga Bay in Wellington, and nearly double the highest corrosion rate recorded at marine sites in Europe. "We are testing other materials to see how they will perform on the Chatham Islands environment," de Raadt said. "This then can help inform people's choices about what material to use where." "I guess the main point for us is: the right material in the right place." The current rating system fell short. BRANZ senior scientist Zhengwei Li said materials approved for Zone D - the classification long-held by the Chathams - just didn't hold up. "If you use materials approved for Zone D corrosivity in the Chatham Islands, you will have early material failure." The Chatham Islands Photo: RNZ/ Matthew Theunissen Building company owner Leith Weitzel moved to the Chathams from Wellington just over a decade ago, and said it was definitely an eye-opener. "So up in the eaves of sheds or houses, where you would have some sort of mild steel product or galvanised steel product, if it's not getting rain washing on it, it will start to show corrosion in a few years." It changed the materials they used. "We always opt to use stainless steel externally as much as we can, and we find that's made a huge difference." But even using marine-grade stainless, tea staining - that is, those patchy orange streaks that appeared on metal like water from a tea bag - still occurred. Weitzel said people were often tripped up. "They might buy a flatpack shed or they'll buy a tiny home, something that's of a kit-set nature, and they express that it is quite corrosive and windy and wild over here, and these manufacturers don't supply some of these buildings, these units up to standard, and they find over time that they have used the wrong nails and structural fittings." It was an awareness problem, he said - something the building research association hoped to improve as it took on further tests. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
