Aviva Premiership Rugby to become the first Rugby league in the world to trial real time pitchside concussion video review to help team medical staff better identify players who have been exposed to head injury events.
Funded by the 12 Premiership Rugby clubs, delivered by Premiership Rugby and supported by the Rugby Football Union, the innovative myplayXplay system will be used in all 135 Aviva Premiership Rugby matches this season plus all other senior Premiership club home fixtures in domestic competitions.
A Pitchside Video Reviewer (PVR) will be provided by each Premiership team. The PVR, a member of the club’s medical team will monitor game footage in real-time and will be responsible for referring any suspicious head injuries to the team doctor for his/her review.
Video footage of any suspicious head injury events in real time will be captured and clipped by the PVR and reviewed by the team doctor to assess if a player should be immediately removed on a permanent basis or temporarily replaced for an assessment using the HIA process.
In addition to this initiative designed to improve the recognition of concussed players, the RFU and the English professional club game is investigating the value of the King Devick (KD) test, an eye scanning test in the identification of concussed players.
The King-Devick test, developed in conjunction with the Mayo clinic in America, tests the speed and accuracy of an individual’s eye movements as they track and read out a sequence of numbers presented to them on an iPad. A player’s speed and accuracy are then compared to their performance recorded in the pre-season.
The test will be conducted on all players undergoing a Head Injury Assessment in all Aviva Premiership Rugby, and Green King IPA Championship matches this season. The King-Devick test has shown real potential in identifying concussed athletes in a number of other studies but has not been investigated to date in professional rugby.
World Rugby, who are supportive of the research project, have approved an extension of the current ten minute HIA to 13 minutes in these two competitions to allow the King-Devick test to be performed at the end of the standard HIA process. For this season the King-Devick test will be conducted alongside the HIA solely for research purposes and will not influence the result of the HIA assessment.
If it is shown to be an appropriately sensitive and specific test there is the potential for it to be added to the HIA assessment in the future. Because the test does not need to be supervised by a medical practitioner it has significant potential to improve concussion assessment in the future in both the professional and community games.
Read more from the Harelequins Press Release
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