Source: beingpatient.com | Repost Duerson Fund 8/7/2023 –
Concussion and head trauma is a real and serious risk for many people — especially those who frequently get knocked on the head, like professional athletes. While most people suffer acute and relatively short-lived effects, such as dizziness and headache, in some cases symptoms persist for weeks, months or years. Ultimately, these events can result in long-term and debilitating neurological impairment.
Concussion in sports – from the junior to the elite level – is being prioritized as a public health concern. In Australian, a senate inquiry into concussions and repeated head trauma in contact sport is due to report in August of 2023. Of note in the hearings has been the AFL’s (Australian Football League’s) acknowledgement of an association between head trauma and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a neurodegenerative disease that can only be diagnosed in post-mortem autopsy, and that several studies have found in the brains of professional high-impact-sport athletes.
The latest data show concussion can happen in nearly every sport, not just contact sports, with, in Australia, almost 3,100 hospitalizations for concussion caused by sports in 2020 and 2021. In the U.S., data shows that between 1.7 and 3 million sports- and recreation-related concussions happen each year. Around 300,000 of those concussions are from football. Two in every 10 high school athletes who play contact sports — including soccer and lacrosse — will get a concussion this year, according to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.