World Cup Soccer; a Major League Soccer Superstar's Career-Ending Injury, Concussion; and WORLD NEUROSURGERY: A Common Thread.

摘要

For nearly a month in June and July, 2010, we were treated to the grandest spectacle in participation sport, played on the world stage before unbelievable media coverage as well as fan participation coming from all over the world. International sport's largest participation event, soccer, has been played by the best professionals at the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup in South Africa. The final was an epic battle, with Spain winning in electrifying fashion 1-0 over the understandably distraught The Netherlands.FIFA, the governing body for this event, is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, in a surreally beautiful modem building and setting. I cannot think of FIFA without remembering the three International Concussion Conferences that FIFA, along with the International Ice Hockey Federation, International Olympic Committee, and most recently the International Rugby Union, sponsored. These meetings, held initially in Vienna in 2001, Prague in 2004, and appropriately at FIFA headquarters in 2008, and the consensus statements from these meetings dramatically advanced concussion awareness, understanding, and management.