Dr. Dave Halstead was the first speaker in the “Latest in Eventing Safety” forum on Friday afternoon, which was sponsored by Point Two. Dr. Halstead has a list of credentials including a Ph.D. and research experience 7 paragraphs long, but suffice it to say that he is a preeminent expert on head trauma. He gave a lively, frank, and eye opening talk about head trauma. The first portion of the talk focused on his very intricate research using a head and neck dummy. I am not qualified to give a complete report on that research, however I would summarize his overall message to be that head trauma is considerably more complicated than anyone thinks and we are making some good headway in better respecting head trauma as an injury. Dr. Halstead made a number of very interesting practical points throughout his discussion, which I will cover below. Please note that these are simply my observations and thoughts from listening to a talk by an expert and not the direct written words of an expert:
–Equestrian brain injury data can be hard to gather both because the crash information often depends on eyewitness accounts and because mild brain injury is often hard to diagnose.
–The three most important characteristics for getting a better helmet fit are that the helmet needs to be sufficiently down on forehead, the chinstrap needs to be snug, and the helmet needs to snugly fit on the head.
–Helmets must always be replaced after just one major impact. Once your helmet sustains a major impact there is no question that you need to replace it. Additionally, Dr. Halstead explained that several common chemicals such as typical sunscreen and bug repellent — for example chemicals that end in “-ine” — will ruin most helmets. Apparently if you pour gasoline into a helmet it will eat its way through to the bottom before you can finish filling it up. There’s probably a helmet with a hole in it and an empty gasoline container sitting in a University of Tennessee research lab. As a result of this possibility of chemical degradation Dr. Halstead said that he would never wear a polystyrene helmet longer than 5 years even without a major impact and that a helmet could be ruined by excessive exposure to chemicals such as sunscreen in a few months.
–Dr. Halstead said that he wouldn’t suggest impact sports for anyone less than 14 years old. He said that the biggest issue is that one head trauma, even a minor one, can set up a catastrophic scenario in the next accident. He said that he was a bit hypocritical because his son plays baseball, but he knows that if his son sustains any head trauma he would not allow his son to play again until he is fully healed. The two signs of head trauma that are often ignored is trouble speaking and trouble sleeping. Often doctors look for retrograde amnesia–meaning not remembering how you got to the football game.
–When asked about the best type of helmets, Dr. Halstead said that generally speaking the larger and thicker helmets are better. He said that the issue with this is that riders tend to prefer slimmer helmets. Dr. Halstead said “You can’t find a helmet that will resist the mass of a horse.” Whether or not someone loses consciousness is not a good evaluation of the severity of brain injury.
When Dr. Halstead concluded his speech I was left with a much deeper perspective about what is at stake in protecting our heads and the complications of evaluating the best way to do so.
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The second safety speaker of the day was Paul Varnsverry, who spoke about air jackets and specifically the Point Two air jacket. Mr. Varnsverry works for a company called PVA Technical File Services that has worked for Point Two in evaluating their air jacket and he has been involved in the development of protective equipment since the 1980’s.
Mr. Varnsverry started by explaining that there is a big problem with some safety standards in that they have to go through several layers of non-scientific bureaucracy before being approved. Mr. Varnsverry said that there haven’t been any major technological advances in foam technology since 2005. He explained that the industry standard right now is the BETA 3 level of protection, which is approximately 1 inch thick foam.
Mr. Varnsverry said that thickness, stiffness, and mass are the three important characteristics in a body protector. He explained that good protection tries to maximize all of these but this is often restricted by performance preferences. Mr. Varnsverry then spoke about the importance of quickly inflating the air jacket and the speed of the Point Two being less than 0.1 seconds. He said that it is important to measure this in terms of inflation pressure rather than just looking inflated.
Mr. Varnsverry said that five different independent and reputable test institutes have been involved with Point Two in evaluating their product and that there have been a variety of studies, including by the TRL, that show that the Point Two product reduces the level of impact. Mr. Varnsverry said that in his opinion the next generation of body protectors are the hybrid body protectors, which combine foam protectors with the air jacket in one product. Hybrids offer a level of protection without bulk
One aspect that Mr. Varnsverry emphasized is that at the moment there is no official standard anywhere in the world for inflatable vests. BETA has established a working group to analyze air vests which is a step in the right direction. In short, Mr. Varnsverry spent a considerable amount of time talking about the many advantages of the Point Two but there is still a lot of research to be done that will help us to better understand the air jackets and the best standards to set up for the air jackets.
