Much uncertainty surrounds Medical Discharge of Hopkins

A lot of what happened in the Hopkins vs. Dawson match revolved around the question of whether or not Hopkins was faking an injury. The medical report seemed to clarify to most that indeed Hopkins was injured and could not continue, but after speaking with a physician who works in emergency and saw the fight, this was his interpretation of Diagnosis of Hopkins.

First off, he stated that by an X-Ray, you can not prove one way or another if a person has a dislocation of the shoulder, unless there is an absolute complete separation from the joint and that would only occur with an extreme fall on the lateral side of the shoulder. With the fall that Hopkins had in this match, it would almost be impossible to separate his shoulder the way he did as he actually landed on the other shoulder then rolled over.

This is what the emergency physican I was speaking stated.

Furthermore, when Dr. Sam Thurber did an examination of the patient (Hopkins), he would put pressure over the AC joint and would ask if the patient (Hopkins) feels pain. If the patient says, "yes, I feel pain", this is all relevant to how the exit report is filed.

Furthermore, the medical staff of Hopkins recently stated that Hopkins would be undergoing an MRI. An MRI isn't even the study that you would use to diagnose a dislocation of the AC joint.

An MRI might show some sort of inflammation in the shoulder joint, but at Hopkins age of 46, being a career athlete, his shoulder joint would have undergone changes over the years, degenerative changes in his shoulder.

The radiologist would then report it as the following: There is no dislocation of the joint, but the clinical status of the patient will determine the diagnosis. Therefore, if Hopkins states that there is pain, the medical doctor in charge has no choice, but to state that the patient has a GRADE I AC joint dislocation.

Therefore, the fact that the discharge report of Hopkins stated that there was an X-RAY, this does not mean that the X-RAY shows the separation.

The report merely stated:
Patient had an X-RAY
Saw a doctor
Doctor stated an AC joint separation

This doesn't change what happened in the Dawson vs. Hopkins fight and whether or not you feel that Dawson had every right ot push Hopkins off his back, but it does bring into question whether or not Hopkins really did suffer an injury. There might be some validity to these questions.

The emergency doctor I spoke to did question this report!

 

Remember a doctors job is to simply diagnose a patient. An example would be if a patient went to a hospital suffering a migraine. It is subjective. A doctor can't prove one way or the other if the patient is suffering a migraine, but would simply discharge them with: Patient Examined, Patient suffering migraine.

In the same way, the discharge for Hopkins was, Patient was seen by a doctor, X-RAY taken, AC joint dislocation.

If they made that exact X-RAY public, where there was as complete dislocation of the AC joint, then we could truly believe that is what Hopkins had. Otherwise, there are many questions....

 

Yes...an XRAY will only show an extreme dislocation of an AC joint. The WBC and many others believe that because there was an XRAY taken and the diagnosis was AC Joint Dislocation, that is was an AC Joint Dislocation.

My ER doctor friend, more than likely it was a mild sprain. Furthermore, if he did have a major dislocation of his AC Joint, why do many pictures show him leaning on that elbow?? You can't do that when you have an AC Joint dislocation.

In my mind, HOPKINS was exagerating the fall in order for the referee to deduct points. When the referee wasn't having any of it, Hopkins kept complaining and at that point was on the canvas too long and had to go through with it. I do believe that at the time, if the referee said to Hopkins, "This will be a TKO against you", Hopkins would have got up!