Boxing Deaths - prevent fatalities

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Hopefully, this technology will prevent serious brain injuries in MMA too.  However, I think someone is more likely to die in MMA by getting a broken neck from being slammed.



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West Virginia University neurosurgeon Vince Miele says it's rare for a boxer to be carried out of the ring on a stretcher. More often, by the time a contender who's suffered an acute brain injury seeks treatment, it's become life threatening. That's what happened to his patient, Jennifer Heater, now 28, who in 2002 went to the emergency room the day after leaving a match with a headache that turned out to be a blood clot in her brain.



"The size of her clot could have easily been fatal," says Miele. Heater spent a year in the hospital having multiple brain surgeries.



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In fact, his study showed that in some of the most competitive fights, chosen by The Ring magazine as "fights of the year," "the fighters took more punches than the fatal fights," he says. "They're the ones you watch and you just love and you want to watch again," says Miele. "They're the heart of boxing."



"It's scary," he says. "These people, if they don't have problems acutely, they're going to have problems 20 years from now, 30 years from now. It's scary to see the extent of the damage that they are taking in the ring."



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"We can get an accelerometer small enough that we can place it in the back of a mouthpiece, it goes back where the back molars are, which I think is ideal," says Miele. "Where the mouthpiece is and where the accelerometer is in the mouthpiece it's literally an inch from the center of the brain, from the midbrain. So you can't get much closer to the middle of the brain than using the mouthpiece."



"You as a ringside physician would have a computer next to you which would actually measure the force the athlete's taken, the amount of damage being done to the central nervous system," says Miele. "Once a certain level is reached during the match or during a career, it's stopped. The athlete has to forfeit the fight."



 





wow, well the fighters with all the heart in the world would not like the idea, but i think that the boxing world would be affected more then MMA....

I have an even better way to prevent brain injuries in boxing. If you remove the rules that force them to stay in punching range for the whole fight that would significantly reduce the amount of damage done to the brain. Maybe the fighters could switch to wrestling when they clinch and could even do judo or jiu jitsu if they fell on the ground. I think people might even find this innovation in fighter safety more exciting than watching regular boxing. What do you think? Would it ever catch on?

This is worth considering.

That;s pretty cool... but what if it malfunctions and the fight is stopped very prematurely?

Or what if it malfunctions and the fight ends too late?

(Usual product liability.)

The thing I wonder is about how the standard is set. Some guys just have tougher chins than others...

"I have an even better way to prevent brain injuries in boxing. If you remove the rules that force them to stay in punching range for the whole fight that would significantly reduce the amount of damage done to the brain. Maybe the fighters could switch to wrestling when they clinch and could even do judo or jiu jitsu if they fell on the ground. I think people might even find this innovation in fighter safety more exciting than watching regular boxing. What do you think? Would it ever catch on?"



I think thered just be idiots screaming "stand them up ref"