Chief Medical Officer Dr. Rodney Light of Tomball Regional Medical Center said, “This was an important collaboration with the entire northwest Houston sports medicine community.”

Dr. Jamie Pardini and Dr. Benjamin Levine were the guest speakers at the symposium and are considered the “nation’s top most authoritative in their fields,” said Light.

A neuropsychologist with University of Pennsylvania Medical Center Sports Medicine Concussion Center, Pardini spoke about concussions and the importance of waiting until symptoms resolve before returning to competition.

“Head injuries are very common, with over 1.6 million concussions per year. They can cause significant difficulty in school and in life if not managed appropriately,” said Dr. Scott Rand, a family practice and sports medicine physician and director of the primary care sports medicine fellowship at the Texas Sports Medicine Center.

Another highlight of the symposium included Electrocardiogram (ECG) pre-participation screening for athletes by Levine, director of the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine at the Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas.

“Dr. Levine discussed in detail the risk of screening athletes with ECG’s  The problem is that the test is not as easy to interpret as we would like and there is a high likelihood that an athlete can be removed from practice or made to undergo very expensive tests to evaluate an abnormality that would mean nothing,” said Rand.

“Heart problems in athletes are rare, but when a death occurs it is very traumatic for a community or team. We all want to do something to protect everyone from a devastating event, but if it becomes a national requirement, ECG screening for everyone has the potential to keep 700,000 young athletes from participating that would never have had a problem,” Rand added. “An ECG is very appropriate as a screening test, but it is important to understand that the test will not find every abnormality, and that if it does, then the child will be restricted from activity, possibly unnecessarily.”

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