Innovative Views on Sports Medicine

The National Youth Sports Safety Foundation recommends that children under the young age of six years old not play the sport of football. Before a helmet is to be put on the field is has to meet the standards of the NOCSAE (The National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment.) NFL players suffer an estimated one hundred-fifty nine concussions the past season of twenty-twelve. Health offices estimated that a total of of about fifty percent of school aged players have had an injury to the head throughout their football careers. Recent studies have shown that football players may still experience long term brain changes even if they haven't suffered a concussion. The researchers studied sixty-seven college football players after a game the researchers conducted brain scans and blood test. The test showed a protein involved with regarding nerve growth that has been associated with the

Concussions have become a major controversy in the United States. Because of uninformed students and negligent coaches, many student athletes are experiencing the severe complications that accompany the injury. High school athletes seem to be the most affected and for this reason are more vulnerable than other students to experience concussions. Not properly managing concussions in time could have significant and problematic injuries that could potentially effect the victims overall ability to live a healthy life. For this reason, athletes should have to stay out of any physical activity for the necessary time to allow their brain to properly heal.

If a student player were to be impacted on the field and have a concussion, they should sit out for a longer period of time to fully recover. This because if a student were to have a head injury, somewhat recover, and then get back on the field, they would have higher risks of permanent brain damage which can effect their daily activities. Findings show that a high school student are 3 times more likely to experience a second concussion if they have already had a concussion during that season. They also show that if they fail at properly healing their concussion, they might have long-term consequences and could effect jobs further in life.

Because athletes do not take the responsibility to manage their injuries it leads to long term health concerns over a period of time. “The NFL must go further and clarify the rules even more, Durando contends, especially when it comes to hits on defenseless players, and they should continue to focus on decreasing the number of concussions to players in order to protect a player's long-term health” (par. 1). Stu Durando, a sportswriter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, acknowledges the fact that the National Football League has more work to do in decreasing concussion injuries. He not only stresses the cases of concussions, but shows a motive to help protect players along with their future mental wellness. Given these points, brain injuries tend to display as athletes age. Post Concussion Syndrome is what typically disarrays a former football player in the long run. Post-concussion syndrome is a complex disorder in which a variable combination of post-concussion symptoms — such as headaches and dizziness — last for weeks and sometimes months after the injury that caused the concussion. Post-concussion syndrome can include psychological, physical and emotional problems including headaches, difficulty focusing on tasks, dizziness, or simply a state of mind that some would describe as “not feeling yourself”. “Sleepless nights were followed by partial amnesia. His grades plummeted. As his memory faltered, he grew embarrassed and anxious. Football had been the center of his life, but now he couldn't even exercise. Finally, he withdrew from college. Most players, like Reed, will recover completely after a period of headaches, sleepiness and difficulty focusing in class. Others--one in 10, some experts say--suffer long-term symptoms. They are more likely to develop post-concussion syndrome, where fogginess, headaches, poor

Athletes around the world come together every day to compete and with competition comes injuries. Athletic trainers are typically the first responders to assist the athletes and provide diagnoses and treatment. Although injuries are always going to happen the main responsibility of an athletic trainer is to prevent them from happening. There are a wide range of possible injuries in which an athlete can get into, concussions are one of the most common types of injuries during sporting activities. As a matter of fact, concussions occur at a rate of 1.6 to 3.8 million per year during sporting activities (Broglio). However, these figures fall short as there are many concussion injuries, which are unreported by either athletes or coaches and often

Current United States statistics indicate approximately 7 million head injuries occur each year. Seven hundred thousand of these relate to sports and recreational activities, and three hundred thousand relate directly to sports. Eight deaths occur each year in professional football due to brain injury (Genuardi & King, 1995). These deaths most commonly result from subdural hematoma, when blood collects within the brain, and the associated brain injury. About 20% of participants in high school football suffer a concussion in a single season. Ongoing studies by the National Athletic Trainers Association showed, “a 17% increase in minor head injuries and an 85% increase in moderate head injuries in high school football comparing the 1980s to the 1990s” (Powell, 1998). A portion of these increases is because of better and more comprehensive reporting systems but the risk of concussion remains. Further, a football player who suffers one mild brain injury (MBI) has four times the risk to sustain a second MBI (Young, Jocobs,Clavette, Mark, & Guse, 1997).

This article portrays how playing football can cause negative long term effects on your body. Frontline reported on numbers from the Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University, where researchers studied the brains of 165 people who played football at the high school, college, or professional level. They found evidence of CTE in 131 of them—79 percent. Of the brains studied, 91 of them belonged to former NFL players, and 87 of those 91 (96 percent) had signs of CTE. In an attempt to further reduce concussions some teams are considering adopting a tackling style similar to that of rugby, where players

In medical terms, concussions are described as "a complex pathophysiologic process affecting the brain, induced by traumatic biomechanical forces" (Hunt, Paniccia, Reed, & Keightley, 2016, p. 749). Over the past couple of years, the number of concussions in athletics has increased drastically. According to the data released by the National High School Sports-Related Injury Surveillance Study, in the school year 2005-06 there were 133,000 concussions, which was much less than the recent data of the 2014-15 school year of 292,000 (Brzycki, 2016, p. 57). Not only are concussions becoming more prominent, but they accounted for 24.5% of all the injuries in 2014-15 (Brzycki, 2016, p. 57). Although many advances in concussion protocol have been

“Concussion,” as defined by Elizabeth D. Schafer and Amy Webb Bull from the Salem Health Magill’s Medical Guide, is “the mildest traumatic brain injuries that impairs neurological functions” (Magill’s Medical Guide). In making this comment, Schafer and Webb suggest that the effects of having concussions may affect or alter the normal functioning of the head causing serious, fatal damages or deaths. Moreover, the numbers of concussion discerned in athletes are increasing drastically. For instance, in the article In Football, Stigma of Concussion Creates Incentives to Hide It from Chronicle of Higher Education, Brad Wolverton, the author, presents revealing evidence about the increasing number of concussion in recent years. His study is based on the data from the Datalys Center for Sports Injury Research and Prevention. It was concluded by National Collegiate Athletic Association that 4.7 was the average number of concussions per team during 2011-12 season, but it increased to 6.5 in 2013-14 season. These findings show the interesting number of players who incur concussions in recent years. An anonymous study assembled in January of 2014by ESP. it revealed that “320 NFL players play in the Super Bowl with a concussion. Eighty-five percent said yes” (Almond 49). Based on this study, NFL players are putting their lives in risk. They are ignoring the fatal risks that concussion can cause long-term complications. If the

Studies like the study at Virginia Tech can be used to identify the root cause of consussions and may in result, lead to a solution to the mass head trauma experienced by youth and even professional players. Because concussions occur so often in football, it is a suitable ground sero for the research on consussions in sports. It can lead to better medical diagnosis on the field where spli-second decisions are made and even in domestic cases. I addition, because concussions are a very misunderstood injury, this research is needed. The study wishes to develop a better helmet for football specifically but sports like hoccer could be benefitted too. The general knowledge of concussions would expand if more advanced and specific studies like these

I am interested in the repercussions of playing football since I played for several years and sustained a concussion. As more movies and new stories emerge regarding brain traumas sustained on the football playing field, I am concerned about the long-term effects. I am concerned about how it not only affects professional

For decades, football has been one of the most admired sports in America but also considered one of the most harmful. The injuries in football can vary from shin splints, fractured wrists and to torn ACLs but the injury that causes the most damage are concussions. It is not unheard of for football players to have concussions but it is surprising how unaware they are about the long-term effects. The coaches are not any better because they are telling the players to shake off the injury and then encouraging them to get back in the game. For too long football programs have been downplaying concussions, while they have denied it for too long, the new interest and attention in concussions has the potential to improve athletes’ safety.

The article discusses the scientific research and theories behind whether playing football is linked to traumatic brain injury (TBI) to NFL players. Previous evidence that existed mainly involved finding signs of TBI in deceased players, and so it was difficult to determine whether it was football that was responsible for TBI or other factors. However, studies not show that more than 40% of retired NFL players show evidence of abnormal brain structures (Park). The director of Florida Center for Headache and Sports Neurology, Conidi, analyzed that the brains of 40 former NFL players who played for an average of 7 years showed damage to the white matter of the brain which it responsible for connecting nerve cells among difference regions (Park).

“CDC reports show that the amount of reported concussions has doubled in the last 10 years. The American Academy of Pediatrics has reported that emergency room visits for concussions in kids ages 8 to 13 years old has doubled, and concussions have risen 200 percent among teens ages 14 to 19 in the last decade” (Head Case, 2013). It is reported that between 5-10% of athletes will suffer concussion during any given sports season. Football is the most common sport with concussion risk for males with a 75% chance. It has also been found that 78% of concussions happen during games as opposed to during practices (Science Daily, 2014).

After watching the movie “Concussion,” you will see and walk away with a kind of a important and, in all likelihood, consistent worry and also anxiety attacks about the act of playing football or any sport of the fact. Given the fact that, our brains, and the known sport football (the frequently served opportunity for an important sub-concussive and concussive hits), there is a huge yet clear debate for a plausible medical crisis in the long term it was always happening but we have only just started to realize it recently.