Fourteen-year-old Lincoln Guest barely remembers his first concussion. He was only a toddler when he accidentally ran into his mother's bedframe, got a concussion and fractured his forehead.
"I didn't know what it meant," Guest said. "I just knew it was something with the head."
Since then the competitive hockey and football player has had two concussions. His most serious, and his only sport related concussion, happened in September during a pre-season hockey game.
"A kid blindsided me in open ice and my head hit the ice," he said. "It hurt a lot ... I was very dizzy all the time and it was hard to concentrate."
Guest's mom Andrea Guest noticed a personality change right away. She said he wasn't himself, was sad all the time and his mental health was struggling. That prompted her to seek help for her son at Ottawa's .
"It was totally 360 in that they looked at his nutrition and we gave him different supplements and they talked about mental health," she said. "They recognized that it was more than just his head was hurting and he felt dizzy."
That specialized concussion care clinic is part of a team of over 20 researchers from more than 15 centres across North America who have received a "groundbreaking" $5.4-million grant funding the . The funding is being provided by the Ontario Brain Institute, a provincially funded not-for-profit organization that promotes itself as accelerating discovery and innovation, benefitting both patients and the economy.
“We know that concussion is a leading cause of debilitation for a growing number of people and efforts like TRANSCENDENT have the potential to accelerate solutions and transform care, said Dr. Tom Mikkelsen, president and scientific director of the Ontario Brain Institute.
The new program is a partnership with the CHEO Research Institute, the Ontario Brain Institute, 360 Concussion Care and researchers at a number of Canadian and American universities including Harvard, the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Denver. The research team says it will identify indicators used to track concussion recovery and will use cutting-edge assessment technology from brain imaging to physiological evaluations and blood and saliva samples to help track the diagnosis, treatment and management of concussions across the patient spectrum.
"What this amazing opportunity is, it's a way for us to better understand how do people recover across the entire diversity of people with concussion? And what are ways in which we can better identify ways to treat people with the right treatment at the right time, with a precision tailored approach, using science to answer these questions," said Dr. Roger Zemek, a pediatric emergency physician and senior scientist at CHEO, in Ottawa, who is leading the project.
Canadian researcher Dr. Roger Zemek, centre, is seen smiling for a photo alongside some of his colleagues. Zemek, a pediatric emergency physician and senior scientist at CHEO in Ottawa, is leading a new research program dedicated to improving concussion care in North America. (Submitted)
Dr. Zemek says about 400,000 Canadians suffer from concussions every year but most of the research is done in silos. To change that, this partnership will allow the datasets on thousands of patients to be shared through the .
"Much of the research in the past has been focused on unique populations with concussions, either elite athletes, maybe the youth, maybe military, but it hasn't covered the whole spectrum of mechanisms of injury like motor vehicle collisions, falls, even intimate partner violence," he said.
Dr. Zemek is hopeful the research program, which is currently funded for 2.5 years, will help create new guidelines for concussion care and treatment that improve patient outcomes. The hope is the project will eventually be renewed for another 2.5 years.
"We want all our discoveries that we make in academia and in science to make it to the bedside and to the stakeholders that need it," he said.
As for Guest, he is now healed and back to playing hockey. While he admits he is still worried about the risk of another concussion, Guest said he is comforted to know that treatment plans have advanced drastically since his first concussion and that centres like 360 Concussion Care are available to him.
"I know that if I get another one there are good people who can help me," he said.
That reassurance extends to Guest's mom as well.
"I hope I never have to go through this again, but at least if we are ever in this situation again, I know that the most amazing care is available to us and I can't imagine the luck we had getting him, Dr. Zemek, as a doctor," Andrea Guest said.
Iran is preparing to 'imminently' launch a ballistic missile attack on Israel, according to a senior U.S. administration official, who warned Tuesday of 'severe consequences' should it take place.
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has controversially broken royal protocol and claimed in his upcoming memoir that Queen Elizabeth II was suffering from bone cancer before her death.
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Canadian musician Jacob Hoggard is taking the stand in his northeastern Ontario sexual assault trial.
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A bus carrying young students and their teachers on a school trip caught fire in suburban Bangkok on Tuesday, leaving more than 20 feared dead, officials and rescuers said.
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Canadian members of Parliament are working with their colleagues in Australia and New Zealand to try and convince their respective governments to jointly recognize Palestinian statehood.
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Exclusive polling data collected by Â鶹´«Ã½ in partnership with Insightrix outlines what preferences voters have, if they’re familiar with the party leaders and what issues matter most as Saskatchewan enters into the 2024 provincial election campaign.
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Communities across the country marked the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation with events honouring survivors of residential schools and remembering those who never made it home.
Saskatchewan residents will vote for their next provincial government on Oct. 28.
Exclusive polling data collected by Â鶹´«Ã½ in partnership with Insightrix outlines what preferences voters have, if they’re familiar with the party leaders and what issues matter most as Saskatchewan enters into the 2024 provincial election campaign.
With the writ for Saskatchewan's provincial election set to be issued on Tuesday and election day scheduled for Oct. 28, residents have approximately one month to decide which MLA to vote for.
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The minimum wage in four provinces is going up today.
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A pair of homes are destroyed on Penhale Avenue in St. Thomas, Ont. after an electrical fire set a garage ablaze Sunday night.
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The Windsor Police Service is asking for the public’s help in solving the theft of a signed Connor McDavid Edmonton Oilers jersey.
Chatham-Kent police say a woman has been charged with assault after burning a bystander with a lighter during a dispute.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers seized $11,000 US from an inbound American citizen at the Ambassador Bridge.
The B.C. Green Party is expected to be the first to roll out its complete election platform today.
The Department of National Defence is warning boaters to avoid a small island southwest of Victoria this week as the military conducts routine, but potentially dangerous, demolition training.
The New Democrats are campaigning for another term in British Columbia's provincial election but without many of the familiar faces that have graced lawn signs of elections past.
Fire crews in Vernon, B.C., responded to a large house fire early Saturday morning.
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The Red Bridge, a historic landmark in Kamloops, B.C., was completely destroyed by fire early Thursday morning.
The sentencing for three men convicted of helping lead and coordinate the COVID-19 protest blockade at Coutts, Alta., in 2022 has been delayed.
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Canadian musician Jacob Hoggard is taking the stand in his northeastern Ontario sexual assault trial.
Overnight on Thursday as the community of Elliot Lake was resting to prepare for the upcoming Kraft Hockeyville celebrations, when vandals struck a building that has been top of mind for the northern Ontario city for more than a year.
Ontario Provincial Police remind the public that ‘a case is never closed until it is solved,’ while highlighting the force's continued investigation of the 1996 disappearance of Melanie Ethier.
He may not have logged the fastest time or even gone the full distance, but residents of a Newfoundland town agree the goat who unexpectedly joined the local weekend half marathon was the event's undisputed champion.
A mother in a community where the cost of living is one of the highest in the country says grocery prices are 'inhumane' and retailers are putting profits ahead of people’s basic human right to food.
A soccer game in England on Tuesday night drove a spike in online traffic across the Atlantic to a website launched by the Newfoundland and Labrador government.
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