Former Chicago Bears Pro Bowl safety Dave Duerson had significant brain damage – NFL News
Doctors who diagnosed the brain of former National Football League player Dave Duerson said that he had “moderately advanced” brain damage resulting from repeated hard hits to his head.
Dr. Ann McKee said that “It’s indisputable” that Duerson had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is a progressive degenerative ailment found in persons who have been subjected to numerous concussions and other forms of head injury.
Duerson was a safety in the National Football League (NFL) for 11 seasons, most of which he spent with the Chicago Bears. Before retiring from professional football in 1993, he was selected to four Pro Bowls.
The body of Duerson was found in his home in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida on February 17, 2011. He was 50 years old and left a note that requested that his brain be donated to the NFL’s Brain Bank. Chris Nowinski, co-director of the Centre for the Study of
Traumatic Encephalopathy (CSTE) at Boston University’s School of Medicine, said that Duerson shot himself in the chest “presumably” to save his brain for study.
The CSTE Brain Bank has the brains of over 70 military veterans and athletes, with more than half of them belonging to football players. Besides Nowinski, Dr. Robert Cantu, Dr. Robert Stern and McKee are co-directors of CSTE.
"Dave Duerson had classic pathology of CTE and no evidence of any other disease," McKee said, "and he has severe involvement of all the (brain) structures that affect things like judgment, inhibition, impulse control, mood and memory."
"The likelihood is that if he hadn't had the CTE, he wouldn't have developed those symptoms that he was experiencing at the end of his life and perhaps he wouldn't have been compelled to end his life," McKee went on to say.
The results were announced at a news conference with Duerson’s former wife, daughter and three sons in attendance. Results are normally published first, according to Cantu, but the family wanted them release.
One of Duerson’s surviving sons, Tregg, said that the family is happy to know the cause of death, even though it does not make their loss any easier.
His family said that the Pro Bowl safety had at least ten concussions during his career and some of them resulted in Duerson losing consciousness. Stern said that although Duerson was not hospitalised for any of the concussions, it is important to address
those hits that do not result in concussions.
Ever since the CSTE was started in 2008, they have been researching head trauma in sports and even received a $1 million gift from the NFL to seek better treatment and identification of concussions.
Duerson’s suicide caused a lot of controversy in the media because many people believed that he killed himself to push for better treatment and awareness of concussions from playing football.
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