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posted by: Ruthie
| November 26, 2013, 07:18 PM
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This year, Massachusetts’ high schools reported more than 4,400 student concussions and head injuries. Experts assert that the recent statistics don’t necessarily reflect an increase in head injuries, but an increase in reporting from schools.
"That's good news, not bad news," Carlene Pavlos, director of the Bureau of Community Health and Prevention at the Department of Public Health, told The Boston Globe. "It's not that they weren't happening before; it's that there was less awareness and less identification."
According to a recent report by the Institute of Medicine, high school football players are nearly twice as likely to get concussions as college football players, and as many as 20% of athletes who get a concussion have symptoms that linger more than two weeks.
The report noted that despite growing awareness of the severity of concussions, many athletes are still reluctant to admit having sustained one, and coaches continue to push players to keep playing after they are injured. Additionally, athletes who have had a concussion and return to the field before they have fully healed risk longer-term damage.
“We need people to say a concussion is a significant injury,” said Robert Graham, of the Institute of Medicine. “But it’s an invisible one, and there is a tendency to say ‘shake it off’ and go back in the next series. A concussion is the same as a broken leg. Get them off the field and let it heal.”
As medical experts learn more about brain development and the permanent damage head injuries cause, educators and athletic trainers must take these issues seriously.
Click here for more resources from the Center for Disease Control about preventing and handling concussions.
How does your school handle head injuries? Are they taken seriously by school personnel?
Comment below.
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