Dr. Joseph Torg, an orthopedic surgeon whose expertise treating and researching soccer gamers’ spinal-cord accidents made him a powerful voice within the Seventies for banning a harmful tackling approach in excessive faculties and faculties, died on Dec. 15 at his residence in Wayne, Pa. He was 88.
His daughter, Elisabeth Torg, confirmed the demise however didn’t cite a trigger.
By the mid-Seventies, Dr. Torg was well-known for his sports-related actions. A former offensive guard for Haverford College in Pennsylvania, he was the physician for a number of Philadelphia groups and was typically quoted on gamers’ accidents. He opened one of many first sports activities medication and rehabilitation facilities within the United States, at Temple University. And he testified in a case in New Jersey that led Little League Baseball to finish its boys-only coverage.
Dr. Torg later grew to become alarmed by a spate of spinal-cord soccer accidents brought on by spearing — by which a participant lowers his head and launches himself into an opponent, utilizing the highest of his helmet as a battering ram.
“If these forces are greater than the elastic capabilities of the spine,” he defined in a 1992 video narrated by Dick Vermeil, the previous Philadelphia Eagles coach, “the spinal segments will buckle.”
In 1975, Dr. Torg advised The Associated Press that the N.C.A.A. and the National Federation of State High School Athletic Associations have been “derelict in their responsibility to safeguard the health and well-being of young men playing football.” He urged them to change their guidelines.
He teamed up that 12 months with Ted Quedenfeld, Temple’s head athletic coach, to gather information concerning the variety of spinal-cord accidents within the United States brought on by spearing. They known as the undertaking the National Football Head and Neck Injury Registry.
Around that point, a colleague mentioned, Dr. Torg put additional stress on the N.C.A.A.
“As I remember, he threatened the N.C.A.A. that if they didn’t institute the rule, he’d sue,” Dr. Raymond Moyer, a professor of orthopedic surgical procedure and sports activities medication at the School of Medicine at Temple, mentioned in a telephone interview. “He didn’t back down from anyone.”
The N.C.A.A. and excessive faculties banned spearing in 1976. The N.F.L. adopted swimsuit in 1979, largely on account of a paralyzing hit to the helmet of Darryl Stingley, a New England Patriots receiver, a 12 months earlier.
The registry’s preliminary findings, revealed in 1979 in The American Journal of Sports Medicine, documented 259 cervical backbone fractures and dislocations amongst highschool, school and soccer gamers between 1971 and 1975. Ninety-nine of the gamers grew to become quadriplegics.
The guidelines in opposition to spearing had a major impact. From 1976 to 1984, the variety of cervical backbone fractures, dislocations and partial dislocations fell to 42 from 110, and the variety of gamers rendered quadriplegic fell from 34 to simply 5, in accordance to a 1985 article by Dr. Torg and three colleagues within the Journal of the American Medical Association.
But spearing would by no means be totally eradicated, and neither would the potential for spinal-cord accidents.
In one of the crucial well-known incidents, Marc Buoniconti, a linebacker at the South Carolina navy school the Citadel, grew to become a quadriplegic in 1985 after tackling a operating again from East Tennessee State University. Three years later, when Buoniconti sued the Citadel’s crew physician for negligence, Dr. Torg testified for the protection, arguing that Buoniconti had speared his opponent and bore duty for his harm.
“What we are dealing with as far as causation is not a medical problem,” Dr. Torg mentioned. “What we are dealing with as far as causation is a coaching technique problem.”
The jury exonerated the Citadel’s physician.
Joseph (*88*) Torg was born on Oct. 25, 1934, in Philadelphia. His father, Jay, was an insurance coverage salesman. His mom, Elva (May) Torg, was a phone operator.
Dr. Torg earned a bachelor’s diploma at Haverford in 1957 and his medical diploma from Temple 4 years later.
Ms. Torg mentioned in an electronic mail that her father probably pursued orthopedics “because of his love of football and his own experience with athletic injury (concussion) in high school.”
“When he graduated medical school,” she mentioned, “orthopedic surgery was the most sports-oriented field in medicine and the field that enabled him to treat athletes.”
After interning at San Francisco General Hospital (now Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center) from 1961 to 1962, Dr. Torg spent two years within the Army Medical Corps. Following residencies at Temple University Hospital and Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children (now Shriners Children’s Philadelphia), he started educating at Temple in 1968.
He quickly grew to become broadly identified. In 1970, he and Mr. Quedenfeld launched a research that discovered standard soccer sneakers — with seven cleats, every three-quarters of an inch lengthy — have been way more liable for knee and ankle accidents than soccer sneakers, which had 14 cleats however shorter ones.
Three years later, in New Jersey, Dr. Torg testified in a problem to a rule that prevented ladies from enjoying Little League baseball in that state. At a listening to of the New Jersey Division of Civil Rights, he refuted claims by Creighton J. Hale, a Little League Baseball government, that feminine bones weren’t as robust as male bones; in truth, Dr. Torg mentioned, as a result of ladies matured sooner than boys, it was attainable that their bones have been stronger.
A listening to officer held that the rule barring ladies violated state and federal anti-discrimination legal guidelines. The determination helped lead the nationwide Little League group to let ladies play the subsequent 12 months.
Dr. Torg and Mr. Quedenfeld opened the Center for Sports Medicine and Science at Temple in 1974.
Dr. Torg left Temple in 1978 to be part of the School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, the place he established one other sports activities medication middle. He labored for the college till 1994. He joined MCP-Hahnemann University School of Medicine in 1995 and taught there for seven years earlier than returning to Temple.
Among his achievements was popularizing a fast and noninvasive take a look at that had been conceived by a mentor, Dr. John W. Lachman, to diagnose a knee harm widespread to athletes: a torn anterior cruciate ligament.
“It changed everything,” Dr. John Kelly IV, a professor of orthopedic surgical procedure at the University of Pennsylvania, mentioned in a telephone interview. “Many tears were being misdiagnosed as sprained knees, and people went out and got more injured.”
At completely different factors between the Seventies and the Nineties, Dr. Torg was the crew physician in Philadelphia for the N.B.A.’s 76ers, the N.H.L.’s Flyers, the N.F.L.’s Eagles, the Freedoms of World Team Tennis, the Atoms of the North American Soccer League and the Temple soccer crew.
Doug Collins, an All-Star guard who joined the 76ers in 1973 and was typically handled by Dr. Torg, mentioned in an electronic mail: “He tried to put me back together thru many foot & knee injuries. He knew how badly I wanted to play & on many occasions tried to protect me from myself.”
In addition to his daughter, Elisabeth, Dr. Torg is survived by his spouse, Barbara (Groenendaal) Torg; his sons, Joseph Jr. and Jay; and 7 grandchildren.
In 1991, Dr. Torg created a grading system to decide the severity of a concussion — one of the crucial vexing issues in soccer, in addition to in soccer, hockey and different sports activities.
Dr. Joseph Maroon, a consulting neurosurgeon for the Pittsburgh Steelers and a professor of neurological surgical procedure at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, mentioned Dr. Torg’s system was the inspiration for the neurocognitive testing that Dr. Maroon helped create to assess the severity of a concussion and an athlete’s potential to return to play. That testing is now the usual of care within the N.F.L.
“We really followed up on Joe’s work and computerized it,” Dr. Maroon mentioned. “He was avant-garde and scholarly.”
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