Connacht will be among five URC teams to use new medical cooling caps on players who have suffered concussive injuries over the next year.
Named PolarCap, the caps will be tested out by one team in each of the participating BKT URC countries - Connacht (Ireland ), Edinburgh (Scotland ), Scarlets (Wales ), Vodacom Bulls (South Africa ) and Zebre Parma (Italy ). The feasibility study will be focused on the treatment effect of PolarCap on concussed players.
Seven French clubs have also signed up to use the new aid, including Clermont, while the Australia, Portugal and Georgia national sides are also on board.
The cap will be used in the acute phase of injury - for at least 45 minutes after a diagnosed concussion - and is intended to reduce elevated brain temperature, and the associated metabolic demand in the brain after a concussion occurs in sports.
It is a portable cooling system consisting of a cooling unit, a patented silicone-based headcap and an insulating neoprene cover. The cooling unit supplies circulating cold fluid through the headcap to lower the exercise-induced elevated brain temperature of a concussed athlete.
According to the URC, PolarCap has previously been clinically evaluated in a five-year study conducted by Lund University in partnership with the Swedish Ice Hockey League.
The URC says that partnership "recorded promising data for reducing the number of prolonged concussion compared to concussed players who did not use the PolarCap treatment."
URC chiefs have previously supported several instrumented mouth guard trials, the latest one with HITIQ, and has introduced a saliva testing trial with Marker Diagnostics across the competition.
“In August it was a pleasure to host a meeting in Edinburgh, attended by a number of the world’s leading medics in rugby, concussion, and hypothermic medicine as well as BKT URC and PolarCool management.
“The outcome of which was a shared opinion that it would be good scientific due process to further study the treatment effects of cooling acute concussions in elite rugby with PolarCap. This current agreement is an essential first step to that," the League's medical advisor Dr Michael Dunlop, said.
PolarCool CEO Erik Andersson said: “It feels fantastic to have finally achieved this goal. The United Rugby Championship led by medical advisor Dr Michael Dunlop has conducted a thorough due diligence of the evidence surrounding hyperthermia, concussion, and cooling as a treatment.
