Sports-Related Concussions & Subconcussive Injuries

The best way to combat under-reporting and increase the chances a concussion will be identified early on the sports sideline may be through real-time monitoring of head impact exposure to identify high-risk impacts and alert medical personnel on the sideline to the possible need to perform a concussion assessment.

A new study linking frequent heading of a soccer ball with changes to the white matter of the brain and poorer performance on a neurocognitive test of memory is likely to add fuel to the fire of a 30-year-old debate about the effects of heading.

The day when monitoring of head impact exposure in football and other contact and collision sports becomes commonplace is closer at hand than one might think. An increasing number of helmet sensor products in this rapidly evolving field are already on, or about to come to, the market. The following lists some of the currently - or soon-to-be - available head impact sensor systems.

Brain trauma to youth and high school players in contact and collision sports can occur not just from violent helmet-on-helmet collisions but from repetitive sub-concussive blows.  There are five major ways to reduce exposure to such hits, experts say.

Brain trauma among football players may be less the result of violent helmet-on-helmet collisions that cause concussions as the accumulation of sub-concussive blows.  The long-term effects of such repetitive brain trauma are still unknown.

Forty-nine states have enacted a so-called Zackery Lystedt concussion safety law since May 2009.  Wyoming has enacted a weak concussion safety law, and the high school athletic association in Arkansas has rules that mirror the concussion laws of other states..

The most recent international consensus of concussion experts is that a young athlete with diagnosed concussion should not be allowed to return to play on the day of injury, regardless of the medical resources available and regardless of the level of athletic performance.

The current international consensus statement on concussion in sport lists a range of factors that may influence the evaluation and management of concussion, in some cases predicting the potential for a prolonged recovery, but other guidelines, and some studies, list different risk factors.

Preventing serious injury (concussion, traumatic brain injury, spinal paralysis) or death in high school and Pop Warner football; advice from the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Researc on football safety

Each year, almost 87,000 hockey-related injuries to youths under age 15 are treated in hospitals, doctors' offices, clinics, ambulatory surgery centers and hospital emergency rooms. The total cost of these hockey-related injuries was more than $978 million in 2006. This amount includes medical, legal and liability, work loss, and pain and suffering costs.