Joe Delamielleure & Sports Concussions

Published February 24, 2014 at 12:00 AM EST

Joe Delamielleure is a tough guy. Delamielleure spent years in the trenches of the National Football League as an offensive lineman butting heads with some of the fiercest players. Those battles earned him a place in the Hall of Fame but he also earned a lifetime of aches and pains and, most recently, a diagnosis of a degenerative brain disease called CTE. We’ll talk with Joe Delamielleure about his career, his condition and his battle to get help from the league he helped make so popular. But we’ll also talk about the rising occurrence of concussions among athletes of all ages, the research, the impact and the future of football and other sports for school age athletes.

Joe Delamielleure's diagnostic MRI reads, "FDDNP signal is elevated in amygdala and midbrain areas and in frontal cortex (red ovals, upper row) visible on two enlarged transaxial slices from Figure 1. MRI scan results (lower row) show brain atrophy and englarged ventricles. Additional degenerative changes are visible in the white matter as small lesions (red arrows) and as larger vacuoles in both hippocampi (red arrowheads.)"

Guests
Joe Delamielleure - Hall of Fame NFL Football player
Dr. Robert Jones - Team Physician, UNC Charlotte Department of Athletics, Coordinator of Sports Medicine, Carolinas Medical Center
Kristen Phillips Ramsey - Athletic Trainer and physician extender for the medical director of the Carolina Sports Concussion Clinic