dfe puibfsef s The rate of concussions suffered by National Hockey League players did not go do wn after the league

introduced a rule against hits to the head, researchers have found. Neurosurgeon and concussion researcher Dr. Michael Cusimano of St. Michael's Hos pital in Toronto and his colleagues compared concussion rates before and after t he NHL introduced rules against hits to the head. Pittsburgh Penguins' Sidney Crosby, centre, sits between his doctors as they tal ks about his recovery from a concussion he suffered in January 2011. An NHL rule change in 2011-12 made bodychecking another player with the head as the main po int of contact illegal.Pittsburgh Penguins' Sidney Crosby, centre, sits between his doctors as they talks about his recovery from a concussion he suffered in Ja nuary 2011. An NHL rule change in 2011-12 made bodychecking another player with the head as the main point of contact illegal. (Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press) "The rate of concussion did not decrease," Cusimano said in an interview. "It in fact increased the first year and in the second year in the NHL it stayed stabl e. So we didn't see a decline like I think everyone had hoped, including the NHL , who said brought in primarily for player safety." The NHL changed its rules to make bodychecking another player with the head as t he main point of contact illegal in the 2010-11 season. The following year, the rule was modified to include all hits to the head with referees using their disc retion on whether the contacted player put himself in a vulnerable position. Concussion numbers were staggering in NHL's 2011-12 NHL GMs decide on new concussion protocol The researchers also looked at the Ontario Hockey League, which introduced a sim ilar rule back in 2006, as a control group. Writing in Wednesday's issue of the medical journal PLoS One, the researchers sa id 64 per cent of NHL concussions were caused by bodychecking. About 28 per cent of concussions, and 28 per cent of suspected concussions, were caused by illegal incidents where the aggressor was given a penalty, fine or su spension. "We conclude that rules regulating bodychecking to the head did not reduce the n umber of players suffering concussions during the NHL regular season and that fu rther changes or stricter enforcement of existing rules may be required to minim ize the risk of players suffering these injuries," the study's authors concluded . In the study, the cause of concussions were classified as blindsiding checking f rom the player s blind side with main contact to the head other checking to the he ad, checks to the body, fighting, non-contact or collision with a teammate, hit by at stick or hit by a puck. Cusimano fears that inaction is harming the "great sport." He suggested changes such as: A ban on fighting. Harsher penalties for those teams and players who inflict concussions. Altering equipment. Changes to ice size and rink environment.

The major limitation of the study was that team injury reports and publicly avai lable data were used to look at concussions, instead of medical records. Previou s research suggested the approach was accurate for studying injuries among profe ssional basketball players. The study was funded by the Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation and the Canadian Inst itutes of Health Research. The Windows version of TestDisk & PhotoRec should work under - Windows NT 4 - Windows 2000 - Windows XP - Windows 2003 - Windows Vista - Windows Server 2008 - Windows 7 On Windows 64-bit, WoW64 (Windows 32-bit On Windows 64-bit) is required to run these 32-bit executables. For Windows 64-bit without WoW64, use the Windows 64-bit version of TestDisk & PhotoRec. If you are using an older version of Windows, run the DOS version of TestDisk. You can download it from http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download TestDisk doesn't need to be installed, you only need to - extract the files - run testdisk_win.exe or photorec_win.exe TestDisk & PhotoRec documentation can be found online: - http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk - http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec