Another week, another conference. This one was organised by World Rugby and, like the last, which was organised by the Concussion in Sport Group, it was held in Amsterdam. World Rugby’s chief medical officer, Dr Éanna Falvey, explained that the aim was “to evaluate the latest research and focus on where we might need to focus funding to continue to fill the gaps in our collective knowledge”. There was a lot on the agenda: a session on instrumented mouth guards, a workshop on laws and player welfare, and, first thing in the morning, a series of talks on brain health and chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
World Rugby made all three available by live stream. It’s a positive step forward that the proceedings are open, and that anyone interested is encouraged to watch. It’s some of what they saw when they logged on that’s the worry. There were three speakers in the session on brain health. First up was the neuropathologist Dr Rudy Castellani, who is professor of pathology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and the second was Dr Ken Quarrie, a specialist in the epidemiology of rugby injuries and chief scientist at New Zealand Rugby.
