Closed shop? Sport needs more voices to reach real consensus on concussion | Andy Bull

Important decisions that set standard for diagnosis, treatment and return-to-play protocols are taken by a select group

Late in October 2016, Dr Richard Sylvester arrived at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Berlin for the first day of the fifth International Conference on Concussion in Sport. Sylvester is a consultant neurologist at the UK’s Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health, and has worked as a concussion adviser for both the Football Association and World Rugby, but this was the first concussion conference he had attended.

“And when I came to it I felt I didn’t understand what on earth was going on. I was like: ‘Am I missing something?’” he says. “Because this is not the approach I would have taken, you know? I thought to myself, ‘I don’t understand this. This is weird’.”

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