Former UFC fighter becomes doctor, now researches brain damage

Former
Ultimate Fighting Championship featherweight Thiago Tavares has taken on a new challenge outside the cage.

Tavares (24-11-1) retired from MMA in 2021 and used some of his career earnings to pay for medical school. The Brazilian is now a practicing doctor who specializes in neurology and is working on a master’s thesis examining possible markers of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in ex-combatants.

Thiago Tavares looks for potential CTE markers in former UFC fighters

Speaking to Sherdog, Tavares explained that currently, CTE can only be definitively diagnosed by examining brain tissue after death. His research aims to investigate whether brain wave measurements and artificial intelligence can help identify a reliable marker in living patients.

“Unfortunately, the only way to confirm CTE is to examine the brain tissue (post-mortem biopsy) at an anatomopathological examination,” Tavares said. “There’s still no reliable marker to show that an athlete has CTE, so based on certain symptoms, we say they have traumatic encephalopathy syndrome.”

According to Tavares, the project will involve 40 former UFC fighters from his generation who competed between 2010 and 2017. The team plans to use a helmet equipped with electroencephalography to measure brain activity along with symptom assessment to search for a potential marker.

“We’re using a helmet that’s doing a functional electroencephalogram and measuring brain waves, including using artificial intelligence to try to find that marker, in addition to obviously looking closely at the symptoms, which would allow us to say that a person has CTE before (they) die,” Tavares added.

The former fighter hopes his medical work can give back to the sport that supported his education and career.

“Everything I have in life, the UFC gave me,” Tavares said. “I hope that I will have the opportunity to say thank you at the next UFC in Brazil
Dana WhiteJoe Silva and Sean Shelby in person. And I hope that through my medical work I can give some of that back by helping the future generations of this sport.