Novel Protection Against Potential Brain Injury During Competitive Football Head Impacts

The Device has the promise of providing a novel mechanism for reducing or preventing the likelihood of TBI, and may be used in conjunction with other protective equipment. TBI is the leading cause of death in individuals under age 45. The cost of TBI in the U.S. is estimated at anywhere from $50 to $150 billion, annually. The January, 2008 New England Journal of Medicine reports, "Head and neck injuries, including severe brain trauma, have been reported in one quarter of service members who have been evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan". The vast majority of these injuries have resulted from exposure to improvised explosive device (IED) blast waves. Head injuries, concussions and the resulting trauma have been in public discussion recently as the National Football League (NFL) deals with a lawsuit regarding head injuries by about one-third of living former NFL players.

According to NASA, "The oscillation of a fluid caused by an external force, called sloshing, occurs in moving vehicles containing liquid masses, such as trucks, etc." This oscillation occurs when a vessel is only partially filled. It is hypothesized that the brain faces similar slosh energy absorption during external force impartation. Slosh permits external energies to be absorbed by the contents of a partially filled vessel or container by means of inelastic collisions. Tissues of differing densities can decelerate at different rates creating shear and cavitation. If the collisions between objects or molecules are elastic, the transfer of energies to those objects diminishes, minimizing the energies imparted by slosh.

Woodpeckers, head ramming sheep and all mammals (including humans) have small, little known and misunderstood muscles in their necks called the omohyoid muscles. Highly G-tolerant creatures of the forest have utilized these muscles to gently restrict outflow of the internal jugular veins thereby "taking up" the excess compliance of the cranial space and ultimately protecting themselves from TBI like tiny "airbags" in a motor vehicle. Rat studies by have demonstrated that we can easily and safely facilitate this muscle's actions by a well-engineered gentle compression over those muscles.

The medical Queckenstedt Maneuver devised to detect spinal cord compression, gently places pressure over the external jugular veins to increase cerebral spinal volume and pressure. In this maneuver, the veins are compressed while a lumbar puncture monitors the intracranial pressure. "Normally, the pressure rise to the higher 'plateau' level occurs instantly upon jugular compression to fall again equally fast upon release of the compression". This incredibly simple principle can be employed to protect soldiers and athletes from TBI by safely, and reversibly, increasing intracranial volume and pressure. The neck collar device is made of Outer collar - hytrel (thermoplastic elastomer), Inner collar - TPSiV (thermoplastic elastomer), metal insert (stainless steel), and is fitted to the neck to provide a comfortable and precise jugular compression that potentially mitigates cerebral slosh.

Although the skull, blood, and brain are "almost incompressible," the vasculature tree of the cerebrum is quite reactive and compressible. As volume is added to the cranium, eventually the compensatory reserve volume is surpassed and the intracranial pressure increases slightly. Increasing cerebral blood volume by just 1-3% safely and reversibly reduces compliance of the cerebral vascular tree and diminishes absorption of slosh energies. Jugular compression increases cerebral blood volume almost instantaneously. As mentioned, this degree of increase has significantly mitigated slosh and TBI in laboratory animals and mimics the highly concussion resistant wild animals that are able to reflexively increase cerebral blood volume through natural jugular compression.