NFL Doctors Stayed In A Holiday Inn Last Night

Back in March the Washington Post published an in-depth look of “medicine” as practiced by NFL doctors. As the article title aptly summed it up, NFL medical standards, practices are different than almost anywhere else. Despite the nonsense spewed by NFL apparatchiks about how player safety always comes first, there is little resemblance between NFL medicine and the way real doctor’s actually perform their duties.

For example (emphasis added),

. . . an ordinary citizen would receive a shot of the powerful painkiller Toradol for acute pain only after undergoing surgery, and typically for no more than five days. But in the NFL, doctors administer it weekly despite dangerous side effects that include renal failure, and its ability to mask pain to such a degree that a player injured during a game may not even be aware of the extent of his injury.

In a 2002 academic paper, 28 NFL physicians reported administering Toradol every game day, injecting up to 35 players per club. Though NFL doctors say use has declined in recent years, several current and recently retired players said the drug continues to be administered freely — and the NFL Physicians Society felt compelled to issue guidelines on its usage last season. “It is not a legitimate thing to offer a player on a weekly basis without a proper indication,” said Andrew Bishop, an orthopedist who for 11 years was the Atlanta Falcons’ team physician.

I suspect in the long-term these medical problems and potential liability they create will drive the NFL out of business.

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