Concussion in Athletes
Every athlete is affected in some way by the potential risk of a concussion during practice or in a game from youth leagues up to the professional level of play. My writing will focus equally on concussions in football athletes at all levels. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has created training courses for coaches and athletic administrators. These training programs assist in the awareness and preparedness of what actions to take should concussions occur during practices or on game day. The courses demonstrate how to use “the return to play” rules to keep the athletes from more serious injury. Because many are attracted to sport programs at a young age, “prevention” is the primary focus at the youth and high school game level. Educating young athletes is the most effective way to reduce concussions in any sport.
CDC and USA Football has partnered with football leagues to ensure that this educational skill set on blocking and tackling is taught to every player. For this purpose, the athlete should retain the knowledge and information to extend from youth training to college/university, then to the professional play in the National Football League (NFL), or the American Football League (AFL). The athlete will have learned these life-saving concepts. Also, they will be more teachable at a higher level in “Heads Up Concussion” training and testing. This is why coaching and training are the best approaches to reducing concussion in
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.
The sports communities that require concussion education include the players themselves; their parents, the coaches, trainers, therapists, and referees; sports organizations/leagues; the media; teachers; and health care professionals. Several gains in recognition and management that impact upon concussion prevention can only be made through widespread of knowledge about concussions. Concussions are a serious issue in many professional sports. Concussions affect multiple sports in many ways. Many sports today are affected by the medical condition of concussions. Today, multiple leagues and professionals are learning how to prepare and prevent these career shattering injuries. With hundreds of medical advancements and a better understanding of the knowledge that the science has, we are assisting athletes to recover from these injuries. In order to understand concussions that lead the role on the games, one must look at the symptoms, injuries, and side-effects of this
Over the past couple of years the National Football League as well as other football associations have witnessed a rise in the occurrences of severe head trauma to players resulting in concussions. One of the NFL’s top priorities is the health and safety of their players. These NFL players bring an abundant amount of joy and excitement to their wild, raving, die hard football fans across the nation. However, these mens’ health today and for decades to come is equally if not more important than their careers that often last an average of 4 years playing football. Despite the increase in the number of concussions in football, leagues are doing all they can to prevent concussions by implementing new rules, provide new and improved equipment,
The sound of two helmets bashing together sends a piercing crack through the stadium, soon to be followed by a roar of thunderous applause from every fan in the stadium. The next day the paper reads that one of the players in the collision suffered a concussion, nut the only thing people care about is watching the highlight on SportsCenter. Yet, people watching the games, coaching the games, and playing the games have never fully understood the danger of concussions. It is important for people in the football community to become aware of what head to head hits in football cause because they do not know the true danger of concussions and how often they occur, what concussions can lead to, and how drastically football can decrease the quality
Most states have three action steps that must be used in order to provide maximum safety for the athletes that are playing the games. The first step is to “educate coaches, parents, and athletes.” By educating coaches, parents, and athletes about the possibility of getting a concussion while playing a sport, they will all know what to look for if there is ever a hard hit to the
Every athlete is affected in some way of the risk of receiving a concussion during practice or in the game from the youth level up to the professional level of play. I will focus more on my topic about concussion in athletes on the football at all levels. How Center of Diseases Control of Prevention (CDC), has created a level of course training for coaches and administrators so they will be knowledgeable of what to do if a concussion occurs whether during practices or game day. How to use the return to play rules to keep the athletes from more injury. Because most sport start at the youth program, the focus has been placed heavily on prevention at the youth and high school levels. Educating youth athletes is the most
“Studies show that approximately one in five high school football players suffer concussions or more serious brain injury during their brief high school careers. The rate at the collegiate level is one in twenty” (Longe, 965). Even though this study showed twenty present of high school football players recorded concussions, many concussions go unreported or unrecognized. Dr. Wayne Langburt surveyed Pennsylvania High School football players after their season. The survey was anonymous and the term concussion was replaced with a generic definition. “The share of players who claimed to have suffered a concussion the previous season was not four percent or even fourteen percent, but was forty-seven percent! Those who received concussions claimed an average of 3.4 each season” (Nowinski,
The NFL is big part of many Americans life during the fall and the off season. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry that hosts the most watched 4 hours of television in America. As an athlete who played football for many years, I wanted to ask the question; is the NFL’s new rules and penalties preventing concussions? During the first two weeks of April, I have compiled six different resources relating to this topic. Some, such as Trevor Horn’s article "Tackling seminar teaches new methods, inspires faith in safer football” cover the aspects of how youth and high schoolers are effected by concussions and what role the NFL plays. Other articles talk about research being put towards helping diagnose brain trauma in athletes, and also whether or
Over the past couple of years, there has been a growing concern for NFL player’s safety and the amount of concussions occurring over the past years. A concussion is a type of mild traumatic brain injury that may be caused by either a fall; a direct blow to the head, face, or neck; or a blow elsewhere on the body that transmits force to the head (JAAPA). There has been a high attention directed towards concussions in many sports, but mainly football. The purpose of the research I will be conducting is to educate the players, coaches, and future players of the NFL on ways to prevent concussions. Several topics I will touch upon my research topic are how concussions associate with musculoskeletal injuries, how long a player should be sidelined before returning to play, the amount of research that has been done to prevent concussions, how teammates can have an effect on whether a player continues playing through a concussion or if they take the safe route, how coaches who are educated annually on concussions can decrease how bad a concussion is and ways coaches have been educated in the past and how effective that method was. I will specifically be paying attention to what is known and what other ways can the members of the NFL be educated on concussions. I want to know what they know and what steps are they taking towards preventing concussions. I also want to know what damage does it cause to the brain over time.
Sports hold tremendous value in American society and all athletes have at least one thing in common: the risk of getting a concussion. A concussion is a traumatic brain injury (TBI) that results from a direct/indirect action or force that causes the brain to shake rapidly within the skull (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2016). This injury can mildly or severely affect the brain’s function by damaging brain cells and producing chemical alterations (CDC, 2016). Throughout the years, concussions have been more prevalent not only in professional sports, but among youth, college, and recreational sports as well. Despite the remarkably high statistics on concussions in the U.S., many cases still go unreported (Groce & Urankar, 2016, p. 22). Sustaining this injury can significantly set a person back physically, mentally, and emotionally. Due to the risks and health issues associated with concussions doctors, athletic trainers, coaches, and lawmakers are getting involved to protect athletes of all levels from receiving concussions.
In recent years an abundance of brain injury research has provided evidence of the lifelong impairments affecting children who have sustained a sports related concussion. Although the information on and how to prevent sports related concussions have been distributed among both athletic coaches, faculty and parents alike, sports related concussions often go unreported. Lack of proper education has lead parents and coaches to believe sports related concussions as being “minor injuries” (Macdonald).
These risks in sports were understood to be dangerous, and science has evolved to make sports safer. So much has changed and been updated in concussion protocol in American sports within the last few years, giving credence to the group that believes that the status quo is adequate in addressing concerns for CTE among sports. The National Football League, NFL, believes that they have been earnestly seeking answers as far back as the 1990’s when they launched a committee on “mild traumatic brain injury” after “two star offensive players retired before the age of 30 due to concussion concerns” (Lartey). Their conclusion then was that concussions were a minor concern. Since then, as new research has brought new revelations of CTE and former players, the NFL has acknowledged this and has taken steps “to warn players about the potential connection between concussions and long-term brain injury” (Florio).
Athletes from over one-hundred high schools and one-hundred-eighty colleges were studied in order for researchers to investigate the epidemiology of concussions and to compare the rates of concussions among high school and collegiate athletes. Two injury surveillance systems, High School Reporting Information Online (RIO), and the National Collegiate Athletic Association Injury Surveillance system collected data and this data was analyzed to calculate concussion rates, describe patterns, and evaluate potential risk factors for sports-related concussions. It was then discovered that 8.9 percent of high school athletic injuries and 5.9 percent of collegiate athletic injuries were concussions. Rates of concussions for both collegiate and high
A recent study of college football players has shown that those who participate in high contact sports and have had a concussion before have a 300% higher chance of having another one in comparison to athletes that have never had a concussion before (Jolicoeur et al, 2007). The NFL and NCAA have enacted several rule changes in order to minimize the occurrence of concussions. These new rules, like many before them, have come under the scrutiny of the very athletes that they were meant to protect. The NHL and NHL Players Association in 1997 together created a program in order to get a better understanding of concussions and how to prevent them (Burke et al, 2011). According to Covassin (2008), athletes who have had more than one concussion take a longer time to recover with each concussion that they suffer from.
Every fifteen seconds, it happens to someone. That is four in a minute, 240 in an hour, nearly in a day, or over two million a year! It is also the number one cause of death in children and young adults. It is a traumatic brain injury, which happens in many contact sports. An example of a traumatic brain injury is a concussion. These are very serious injuries, killing over 50,000 people per year. Contact sports have a great contribution to this number, which causes people to inquire: Are contact sports programs for children and teenagers too intense? A bunch of people think they are too intense because of the injuries, deaths, and emotions that they sometimes cause. But some people think that the sports are not too intense because they keep kids active and they have fun. Although some people think that contact sports are not too intense, an adequate chunk of people believe that contact sports are too intense because of the injuries caused by sports, because it can disrupt the development of the brain, and because sports put children at risk.