For an athlete, injuries are commonplace. A footballer, for example, may fear a cruciate rupture. A tennis player perhaps has epicondylitis (universally known, not surprisingly, as tennis elbow). A volleyball player injured his shoulder, or sprained his ankle. In the case of breakdancing, a discipline that recently made its first Olympic debut, the dangers become more peculiar: in fact, there is a syndrome that only affects breakers, it is called “headspin hole” or “breakdance bulge”, and is due to the continuous rubbing of the head on the floor experienced by those who have practiced headspin for years, the most iconic of breakdance moves, in which athletes rotate while balancing on the top of their heads. A real occupational disease, recently described in an article published in BMJ Case Reports.
The research describes the case of a thirty-year-old Danish man with almost 20 years of experience in breakdancing, and a predilection for headspin. From information gathered by doctors, the young man has regularly practiced his moves for years about 5 times a week, in sessions lasting one and a half hours, dedicating between five to seven minutes per session to rotations on the head.
For years the patient had begun to lose his hair (a problem which, it is known, can be exacerbated by this sport) and had developed a bump on the tip of the skull. Despite everything, however, he preferred not to seek medical advice until the lump on his head began to grow rapidly in size, and the tissues took on an anomalous “soft” consistency, and pain and discomfort appeared.
After examining the patient, the authors of the article, two neurosurgeons from the Copenhagen Polyclinic, decided to subject him to an MRI, discovering a thickening of the skin and underlying tissues, which had caused the appearance of a benign tumor mass thicker than two centimetres. They therefore decided to proceed surgically, removing the tissues and ascertaining the benign nature of the mass. The operation was successful, and despite the presence of thickened tissues around the operation site, the patient declared himself satisfied.
Regarding the causes of the bump, the authors of the study believe that it is probably directly linked to the practice of headspin repeated over time. “We believe the condition is the result of friction between the head and the floor repeated for years by those who practice breakdancing, combined with the fact that headspin requires supporting the entire weight of the body on the skull,” he explains to CNN Christian Baastrup Søndergaard, one of the two authors of the article. “This repeated stress to the skull, skin and scalp probably triggers inflammation, and over time, small bleeds that cause the skin to thicken and scar tissue to form, giving rise to the characteristic bump.”
Regarding the incidence of the disorder, there are no certainties, given that the article details a single clinical case, and although the problem is known (albeit anecdotally) in the breaking community, to date it has not yet been the subject of research in-depth science.