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Concussion Has Long Term Effect On Cognitive Function and Visual Processing, Studies Say

Sport-related concussion sustained in early life can have long-term implications for brain health and cognitive and sensory function, find two new studies.[1,2]  

Using sensitive measures of brain function, researchers found that young adults in their twenties with a history of concussion before age 18 not only had chronically impaired higher-order neurocognitive function, but that lower-level sensory and perceptual processing was also negatively affected compared to those without a concussion history. 

Twelve Ways To Prevent Pitching Injuries In Youth Baseball

If your child is a pitcher, he/she has about a fifty-fifty chance of experiencing pain in his/her elbow or shoulder during his/her baseball career.

A 2001 study in the journal Medicine, Science, Sports & Exercise1 found that athletes who pitched with a tired arm were 6 times more likely to suffer from elbow pain and 4 more times more likely to have shoulder pain than those who did not have a tired arm.

A 2002 study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine2 found:

The Effects Of Heading In Soccer: A 30-Year Debate Continues

A new study linking frequent heading of a soccer ball with changes to the white matter of the brain and poorer performance on a neurocognitive test of memory [1] is likely to add fuel to the fire of a 30-year-old debate about the effects of heading.

The study by researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York is believed to be the first to quantify subconcussive heading and to assess the association of heading with imaging evidence of brain injury and impaired neurocognitive function. 

The findings suggest that may be a heading threshold above which the risk of short- and possibly long-term brain injury dramatically increases.

Six Pillars of Concussion Risk Management

Head injuries in football, as in other contact and collision sports, cannot be completely eliminated, but there ARE steps that can be taken to minimize risk.

The Smartest Team focuses on what MomsTEAM.com Founder and Publisher Brooke de Lench calls The Six Pillars™ of concussion risk management: ​

Pillar One: Comprehensive concussion education

A comprehensive concussion risk management program begins with education.

When MomsTEAM, working with one of the country's pre-eminent concussion experts, Dr. Robert Cantu, launched its comprehensive concussion center in 2001 - becoming, in Dr. Cantu's words, the "pioneers" in youth sports concussion education - the subject was years away from gaining the attention of the national media.

Today, virtually every expert in the field puts concussion education at the top of the list of ways in which football - and all contact and collision sports - can be made safer. 

Full Cognitive Activity After Concussion Delays Recovery

Teens who continue to engage in full cognitive activity after sport-related concussion take from two to five times longer to recover on average than those who limit such activity, a new study has found.

Researchers found that those who engaged in the most cognitive activity after concussion took approximately 100 days on average to recover from their symptoms compared to approximately 20 to 50 days for patients who limited cognitive exertion.

History Of Concussion Linked To Increased Risk of Depression In Teens, Screening For Signs Urged

A history of concussion is associated with more than a 3-fold increased risk of a current diagnosis of depression, even after controlling for age, sex, parental mental health, and socioeconomic status, finds a new study by researchers at Seattle Children's Hospital and the University of Washington, the first to find such an association in a large nationally representative sample. 

Early ACL Reconstructive Surgery Strongly Recommended For Young Athletes, Study Says

Children and adolescents who undergo early surgical reconstruction after suffering a complete tear of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) have much better outcomes than those who delay surgery or never have surgery at all, says a 2013 study.[1]

Reviewing data from six studies comparing operative to nonoperative treatment and five studies comparing early to delayed reconstruction, researchers at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia found that patients in the nonoperative or delayed group were 33 times more likely to have persistent instability in the injured knee than those whose ACL tears were treated surgically.  

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Risk Factors For Sports Concussion: Only Previous Concussion, Game Action Certain To Increase Risk

Previous concussions and match play increase the risk of sustaining subsequent concussions, but there is not enough high quality research evidence to determine whether other factors, such as gender, playing position, playing level, style of play, environment and injury mechanism, also significantly increase risk of concussion in sport, finds a first-of-its-kind, evidence-based systematic review of the scientific literature published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.[1]

14 concussion risk factors

Analyzing the findings of 86 studies which met the critieria for inclusion, South African researchers, led by Shameemah Abrahams, MS of the UCT/RMC Research Unit for Exercise Science and Sports Medicine in the Department of Human Biology at the University of Cape Town, identified 14 risk factors for sports concussion and assigned each a level of certainty for risk assessment purposes (see chart below):

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Perception of Recovery After Concussion Influenced By "Good Old Days" Bias, Study Finds

The ability of teens, and, in the case of younger athletes, their parents, to accurately recall the severity of symptoms experienced before after a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) injury is subject to a "good old days" bias and declines dramatically over time, says a new study, which suggests that using symptom ratings of pre-injury functioning obtained as soon as possible after injury might result in a 5 to 7-fold improvement in a clinician's identification of patients who have clinically recovered from concussion.

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