The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Sports Medicine Concussion Program, established in 2000, is on ongoing clinical service and research program that focuses on the diagnosis, evaluation and management of sports-related concussion in athletes of all levels.
The program’s internationally known team of clinicians and researchers are world leaders in studying the neurocognitive effects of sports-related concussion and pioneering the development of better methods of post-concussion evaluation to determine when it is safe for an athlete to return to sports. The team provides oversight and consultation to assist sports teams’ medical staff in making objective return-to-play decisions after the occurrence of sports-related concussion.
The program’s director is Mark Lovell, Ph.D., who oversees the neurocognitive testing programs for the National Football League and the National Hockey League. Assistant director is Michael (Micky) Collins, Ph.D.
In addition to working with professional athletes, Drs. Lovell and Collins’ goal with the UPMC Sports Medicine Concussion Program is to help make a sophisticated and standardized concussion evaluation system available to high school-age and younger athletes worldwide. Dr. Lovell has developed the first computerized testing system to objectively evaluate the severity of concussions and more accurately determine when an athlete can safely return to contact play following a concussion. The system is called ImPACT™ (Immediate Post-Concussion and Cognitive Testing). Today ImPACT is the most widely used computerized concussion evaluation system, and its use worldwide among professional, college and high school sports teams continues to grow rapidly.
In addition to developing and providing first-of-its-kind clinical evaluation and management of sports concussions, UPMC Sports Concussion Program researchers during the past several years have published in major medical journals numerous groundbreaking research study results concerning the effects of and recovery from sports-related concussions in high school and college athletes. These studies have had significant implications for what have been commonly used return-to-play guidelines because the findings suggest that the effects of even a mild concussion may be more serious than previously thought.
Other members of the UPMC Sports Medicine Concussion Program team are Joseph Maroon, M.D., professor of neurological surgery and Pittsburgh Steelers team neurosurgeon; and Charles (Chip) Burke, III, M.D., assistant professor of orthopaedic surgery, Pittsburgh Penguins team physician and director of the National Hockey League’s concussion program.
For more information visit the ImPACT web site at http://www.impacttest.com/
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