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Reuters
The U.S. government launched on Monday a sweeping study of rising sports-related concussions among the youth, amid concerns that the injuries may have contributed to the suicides of professional football players.
The Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academies of Science, will probe sports-related concussions in young people from elementary school through early adulthood. The study will include military personnel and their dependants, and review concussions and risk factors.
The study, one of the most extensive ever done, will be scrutinized intently by Americans worried about brain injuries in sports, said Robert Graham, head of the panel carrying out the study.
"You start talking about, 'Is it safe for Sally to be playing soccer?,' you get lots of public interest," Graham, a public health expert at George Washington University in Washington, told Reuters after the committee's first meeting.
He said the panel likely would submit its report to the Institute of Medicine in the middle of the summer, with publication expected in late 2013.
A 2010 study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that U.S. emergency rooms yearly treat 173,000 temporary brain injuries, including concussions, related to sports or recreation among people less than 19 years of age.
The number of emergency room visits for such injuries rose 60 percent in the previous decade among children and adolescents, the CDC study showed.
A separate 2007 study showed that the incidence of brain injury was highest in football and girls' soccer.
About 2,000 former National Football League players sued the league last year, alleging it concealed the risk of brain injury from players while marketing the ferocity of the game.
Concerns about a possible link between concussions and mental illnesses, such as depression, grew in the wake of the suicides of former NFL players Junior Seau, Ray Easterling and Dave Duerson in the last two years.
Participants at the committee's meeting said there was a shortage of data on sports-related concussions among young people. The number of relevant brains available for study is in the single digits, and many studies lack breakdowns by age.
Sponsors of the study include the Department of Defense, the CDC and the National Institutes of Health. The panel will also examine studies being done by the CDC and the American Academy of Neurology.
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Yeah, part of the concussion thing is that there are more pressures to win, win, win than ever.
Ahh yes, yet another way to spend tax money on worthless 'studies'. When will it end?
Start with soccer, then to baseball, then to football. Heading a soccer ball in youth soccer is more dangerous then playing youth football. It is pretty simple physics speed of the ball head coverings etc. Now in High School football, concussions are the fault of youth coaches and the improper tackling technique. Leading with the head was illegal making contact with the helmet first was a major rule violation, until coaches can teach technique better concussions will keep going up. Take the head out of both games in 18 and under activities.
What about those of us who had other types of accidents that caused the concussions.
I suspect Obama will reach the same conclusion he always supported. Abortion for all fetuses in order to protect your kids from any danger.
Athletics are the tip of the iceberg. I have been doing research for years in my high school English classes where I found that 15-20% of students who read or write poorly, who spell poorly, who don't like school, who are behavioral problems have had a concussion (mTBI) during their elementary years or before. According to multiple studies done by the CDC and NIH and others, 15-20% is a conservative figure, and I agree. I am glad that attention is being paid to sports related head injuries because it is raising awareness among the public. But the vast majority of children who have suffered mTBIs got them in other ways. Ask yourself why so many more boys than girls are diagnosed with ADHD and don't like to read. Inability to concentrate are outcomes of head injuries, and the consequences of them can last for years, not a few weeks. Concussions among children are epidemic, and parents need to demand more from their pediatricians and become much more knowledgeable about the consequences when little Johnny falls off of his bike and bumps his head.
Go beyond concussions, look at the whole physical picture. One place to start is with the military recruitment service. How many requests for physical waivers have been submitted. I'm very familiar with the requests for medical waivers, I processed them for almost four years in the Marine Corps. I was amazed at the number of 18 and 19 year olds who were physically used up because of high school sports, blown out knees, torn muscles, bad backs and shoulders. This is serious stuff. I'm not anti sports, but the degree of competion is incredible. I played HS football and my good friend (QB) took a hit that rendered him incoherent, he didn't know who he was, or where he was, or what was going on around him. Less than 10 minutes later he was back in the game and came out with headaches and neausea. Games are games, not war. There is no compensation, there is no arbitration, there is only the realization that young men and women are going to live with unnecessary injuries for the rest of their lives.
@rober34 What?!?!? I'm strongly pro-life and definitely not an Obama fan, but I cannot figure out where your comment is coming from or what, even-remote link it has to the article on concussions in youth sports.
Why not a study as to why there are so many mentally ill people walking the streets!!!!
Ahh yes, yet another way to spend tax money on worthless 'studies'. When will it end?
And on the top of the news is the latest football victory. We don't need to know. Sports is business, and it glorifies the professionals and overpays them, while destroying many of the young people in America. Isn't that an act of terrorism? Imagine all the young people who would become great inventors, that would really help America, if they weren't injured in sports concussions? All this is the fault of the major media promoting sports and nothing else. People will watch the highly paid athletes; they will watch whatever is popular at the moment. It's time for the major media to promote something safer.
Humans are naturally aggressive beings. Consider the actions of two women who show up to a party wearing the same dress. If this aggression is not vented in some way it will build. The estrogen dominated society in the U.S. fights to suppress any and all aggressive actions. The result is that children who have no creative outlet for this, such as sports, will find less constructive ways to vent. Even worse is that fine motor skills, such as the ability to move from in front of a large moving vehicle, are never developed. Thus we have pent up violent children with no reflexes looking for an outlet, so they act like "gangstas" and break things. Physical strength is not why men have been the dominant figures in societies from the dawn of man. Get your estrogen off my ball field.