Health & Safety

Lower back injuries are the third most common injuries suffered in athletes under age 18, with many injuries severe enough to sideline young athletes for one-to-six months, and put them at future risk for long-term back problems.

Teen athletes derive many positive benefits from participating in sports, but their increased risk of sports-related injuries may also heighten their risk for medication misuse and abuse, especially for boys, finds a recent study in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

The lack of a systematic approach to making return-to-play (RTP) decision-making has resulted in a high degree of variability among sports medicine doctors in weighing different factors, with some factors considered important by athletes, teams, coaches, and parents viewed as unimportant by doctors in the RTP decision, finds a new study.

Previous concussions and match play are all but certain to increase the risk of concussions, but the jury is still out on whether other factors, such as sex, playing position, playing level, style of play, environment and injury mechanism, also increase concussion risk, finds a first-of-its-kind, evidence-based systematic review of the scientific literature.

Child-specific tools need to be developed and used for the diagnosis, recovery-assessment and management of their concussions, focusing less on return to play as the goal as return to learn, a new study recommends.

Preliminary data from a study of retired professional English soccer players has found that, once their playing careers end, the chronic low-level head trauma they sustained from repetitive heading does not put them at greater risk of long-term cognitive decline than the general population.

Despite increased helmet use, the number of snow-sports-related traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) keeps rising, prompting calls by experts to implement a variety of targeted prevention strategies, with a special focus on educating parents about the protective value of helmets and the role modeling effect the parent's use has on their child's decision to wear a helmet.

HIgh-school AED programs demonstrate a high survival rate for students as well as adults who suffer sudden cardiac arrest on school campuses, says a new study, which strongly recommends school-based AED programmes as an important public safety measure and an effective strategy for the prevention of sudden cardiac death during sports.

Substituting 45 minutes of supervised school-based strength training for 2 of 3 regular PE classes significantly increased upper and lower body strength in healthy schoolchildren aged 10 to 14 years, and significantly increased daily spontaneous physical activity outside the training for boys.

Four new scientific papers add to the growing chorus of researchers pouring cold water on the now common assumption in the media and general population that contact sports causes CTE and that CTE causes those with the disease to commit suicide as scientifically premature.