00:00Quantes Stiggers, he comes off the field after a play, then he passes out on the sideline.
00:04When an athlete suddenly loses consciousness like that, what are the first things that a medical staff is trying to
00:09rule out?
00:09One of the first things that we're thinking about as medical personnel on the sideline there is some sort of
00:14cardiac emergency, right?
00:15So we like to think sudden cardiac death until proven otherwise when an athlete collapses during the field of play.
00:20And so that's one of the first things we're trying to rule out when somebody goes down.
00:23And then once we've kind of assessed them quickly and maybe ruled that out, then we start to think about
00:29other reasons that they could have collapsed.
00:31And that could be from heat exhaustion. That could be from heat illness, dehydration.
00:36It can be from electrolyte abnormalities or low blood sugar.
00:39And it can be from a traumatic injury, right? So a hit to the head or neck that could have
00:43precipitated it.
00:44When you have a player who not only has concussion symptoms, but also lost consciousness during practice, does that initial
00:50collapse change how conservative you would want to be with his return?
00:54A little bit. And I think where it gets a little bit nuanced is one, trying to determine what could
00:58have caused that collapse, making sure that there was no structural heart disease or any other sort of reason that
01:04could have caused them to collapse.
01:05And once that has been ruled out, then if they're falling into this concussion protocol, we never just wait until
01:11they start feeling fine.
01:12We have to gradually increase their activity and they go through this stepwise process of the concussion protocol before we
01:19allow them to return to sport to make sure that they're tolerating it appropriately and they're not having any symptoms
01:24anymore as they increase their exercise.
01:26So a little bit nuanced, but definitely have to progress through that protocol before we allow them to go back
01:31to it.
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