Concussions In Contact Sports

Sports play a momentous role in the lives of so many people across the globe. While they provide exercise, excitement, and fun extracurricular activities, sports can often bring a lot of pain. It is no secret that countless people get injured from their sport several times over the course of their career. One common injury in contact sports is also one of the worst and therefore, a solution to lessen the commonness must be found and enforced. Concussions come in varying levels of “grade” and pain intensity. Some symptoms of a typical concussion are headache, confusion, and amnesia. The injury is most often produced by acceleration or deceleration of the freely moving head. Or in other words, by a traumatic hit to the head, which causes bruising
of the brain that could potentially mean long-term damage. So just imagine getting hit upside the head with terrific force, experiencing frequent excruciating headaches for the few weeks- months even, and then being told sports will not be safe to participate in for several months or longer. Sadly, many contact sports do not provide the safety supplies, knowledge, and training needed to prevent these injuries from occurring.
In fact, recent statistics estimate that approximately 300,000 sports-related traumatic brain or head injuries occur annually in the United States alone. (Riddell, Erika).Because of this, concussions are a significant public health issue due to the frequency of occurrence and the short, as well as long-term consequences that are involved In general, the five “E’s” of injury prevention include epidemiology, education, engineering, enforcement of rules, and evaluation of injury prevention programs.. Therefore, recognition of the signs and symptoms of concussions and some knowledge of the principles of management should be included in the preview of all sport participants, their families, and sports personnel such as coaches, trainers, and
therapists. However, deciding when a concussed athlete can safely return to participation after a cerebral concussion is one of the greatest challenges that athletic trainers and team physicians face. The complexity of the brain and the lack of objective signs and symptoms after injury make the assessment of concussion uniquely challenging. Signs and symptoms that are often present immediately after injury may resolve soon after injury, even when an injury to the head may still be life-threatening. Clinicians must often depend on a subjective account of the symptoms reported by an anxious athlete rather than sound or objective data. (Rebekah, Mannix) The high incidence of cerebral concussions in contact sports is well documented, but has been studied most extensively in organized football.
The game of football, especially at the higher levels, is becoming increasingly dangerous as athletes keep getting bigger, faster, and stronger. The rate at which concussions are occurring is alarming and player safety has become the topic of conversation in the sports community. Since the symptoms and signs of a concussion don't always appear immediately or appear to be mild at first, the sports community originally assumed that the head injuries weren't serious. Besides the risk of suffering another concussion, a growing body of research has linked sports concussions with serious long-term effects like depression and memory problems. To make matters worse, researchers documented that high school and collegiate athletes do not report concussions sustained during football play because they were not aware of the signs and symptoms of a concussion. Furthermore, although the National Football League injury report has shown a decrease of head injuries since 2012, PBS Frontline's Concussion Watch project reported that one-third of all concussions sustained during that time were left off the injury report. As research continues to expose the serious nature of sports concussion, league officials are facing constant scrutiny to change the rules and regulations that govern the game of football. (Michael,
McNamee) Although the sport of football has a protocol to assess a player for a concussion, visual inspections could limit the amount of information a health care provider could gather. To address these certain limitations, in 2014, the “CheckLight” was developed by sports equipment company Reebok and electronics design company MC10. When an impact meets or exceeds a certain predetermined threshold, the lightweight mesh skullcap has a LED light suspended below the base of the helmet that flashes yellow after moderate impacts or red for severe blows. Isaiah Kacyvenski, Mc10's Director of Licensing and Business development, mentioned that "its flexible design measures the impact on the wearer's head, as opposed to the impact on a helmet, which means that the data it provides is more relevant and accurate than competing systems.” Perhaps the most important finding in the current studies is that high school and collegiate football players who sustain a concussion are nearly three times more likely to sustain a second concussion in the same season than those players who have not sustained a previous injury. This may be related to the fact that players are often returned to play prematurely, as nearly one-third of football players return to play on the same day, after an average of only 13 minutes of rest. The remaining two-thirds of the players return an average of only 4 days and 8 days of rest for grades I and II concussions, respectively. The findings of this study confirm the belief that clinicians do not follow the recommended guidelines for return to play, all of which call for at least a 15- to 20-minute clearing period on the sideline, followed by a week of rest and monitoring of symptoms for those athletes who fail to clear quickly. For the most part, athletic trainers and team physicians collaborate to make decisions as to when an athlete should be allowed to return to play; however, at the high school level the decisions are often made solely by the athletic trainer. The question that needs to be answered by clinicians is whether or not they can determine with certainty that a player is asymptomatic. Unfortunately, few clinicians are currently using assessment techniques such as neuropsychological and postural stability testing, which have been shown to be useful in identifying lingering signs and symptoms such as concentration deficits, blurred vision, amnesia, dizziness, and balance deficits. In fact, the current grading scales are based primarily on amnesia and loss of consciousness, both of which only occasionally accompany sports-related concussions. Because the consequences and long-term damage could be severe, researchers and clinicians need to develop safe and practical guidelines based on a multitude of objective variables. Epidemiologic investigation should be coupled with basic science research to help us gain a better understanding of the best way to develop the guidelines for managing concussions in sports.