...Playing sports is an important and common activity in The United States. According to The Center for Kids First, 30 million to 40 million children get involved in organized sports in the course of a year (Wilson, 2011). A recent study indicated that between 4 and 4.5 million children in the U.S. play football annually (Benzel). In my personal opinion, sports are important because it gives children a sense of team work and it also gives them responsibility and keeps them busy at the same time. Even though it is good for them in a way, it can also cause tragedy and pain for everyone that is involved in it. Each year the U.S. emergency departments treat and estimated 173,285 sports-and-recreation-related traumatic brain injuries, including concussion, among children from birth to 19 years old, and each year TBIs contribute to a substantial number of deaths and cases of permanent disability (CDC, 2010). With this information in mind, parents, athletes, and coaches have to be very careful when it comes to concussions, a concussion can happen without the knowledge of the person involved and it can show itself right away after the injury or it can take up to days or weeks after it (brainline.org). The Frontal and Temporal lobes are the most affected areas by Traumatic Brain Injury...
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...dangerous in young athletes before full recovery from the previous one and can lead to “second-impact syndrome” – brain edema resulting in coma or death. One of the early examples in the media was a 16 year old football player from New Jersey who died during the game in October of 2008, after being cleared by his doctor from recent previous brain injury. (M. Schmidt, October, 2008). The mild brain injuries do not receive needed attention, and young athletes end up suffering from the variety of short and long term consequences, such as headaches, nausea, light and noise sensitivity, and later from poor memory, lack of focus and concentration. Long term consequences also include depression, neurodegenerative disorders, such as early dementia...
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...Long Term Effects of Concussions in Sports: Disease, Depression, and Social Effects When discussing the very popular and controversial topic of concussions in sports, there are many questions raised from the public about the effects of these concussions on ones life. For the past few decades, the sporting world has been dealing with head injuries in sports and finding new and better ways to deal with and prevent them. With most people involved in sport now knowing the severity of head injuries and there long term effects, it is not uncommon to hear more and more long term effect stories and how these injuries have impacted athletes’ lives. Psychological changes, brain disease, social declination, and even suicide caused from depression have been documented in recent years and has the public growing more and more curious to what the long term effects of head injuries are and what the best way to deal with them is. For professional athletes, the “loss of identity is evident”(Caron 175) and some may even lose their whole livelihood due to head injuries. In this paper I will be examining the aforementioned long-term effects of psychological changes, brain disease, and deterioration of social abilities. Long term effects of head injuries are an epidemic and by identifying these effects and being aware of symptoms or signs may help us better understand them. In recent years, psychological problems have been identified as one of the most prevalent effects caused by concussions...
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...Fifteen years ago, if you believed that injuries to the brain recuperate similarly to other typical injuries, no one would question you. Today, if you believed that your brain had the ability to fully recover from a concussion, you would be in the vast majority of individuals uneducated on this topic. However, in more recent years, researchers have found that the structure and the way the brain functions can be permanently affected by a traumatic brain injury. Although the brain's ability to repair itself through brain plasticity compensates for the minor damages, more severe damages are not as simple, and are often unable to return to the previous uninjured state. Significant collisions can result in chronic traumatic encephalopathy, in addition...
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...Brain trauma can result in a catastrophic injury. About 21% of traumatic injuries to the brain are the result of sports injuries. There are more than 775,000 children/teens treated for sports related injuries. In 2011, there was 36,925 hospital visits just from cheerleading injuries, 5.5% of these were from concussions. Cheerleading is eighth most dangerous sport in America, which is above football! From 1982-20All star cheerleading is when cheer teams compete against each other. A typical cheer routine is a two minute and thirty second routine that consists of stunts, jumps, tumbling, and dance. Cheerleading has been called the world’s most dangerous sport. Most injuries that occur in sports are from cheerleading. Head injuries account...
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...slope of brain damage caused by concussions. The increase of concussions in sports has had a major effect on athletes and should be re evaluated for safety precautions. Brain damage is caused by a concussion: "Defined as a complex pathophysiological process affecting the brain, induced by biomechanical forces” (Halstead 1). In English, it can be described as "A mild brain injury usually caused by a bump or blow to the head” (Tasian 1). “Mild: used to describe the trauma of the physical...
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...Apps is a pediatric neuropsychologist and assistant director of research in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Behavior Sciences at the Medical College of Wisconsin. According to her book, with an increase in sports affiliated concussions among children, it has become necessary for practitioners to understand how to go about handling age appropriate assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of the concussions. It is also critical...
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...Sport Helmet Use in Soccer Soccer is one of the most played sports in the world. The history of modern soccer dates back to 1815, when the Cambridge Rules were established. The Cambridge Rules eliminated shin kicking and tripping but did nothing for protection of the head for players. Soccer players are competitive by nature, and are willing to go all out to win the game. With that said, how are rule makers making the game safe for young and older athletes? The debate for head protection is at the forefront of modern sports and soccer is at the top of the list. Athletes, such as soccer players, are at a high risk of head or brain injury and youth soccer leagues, high schools, colleges, and professional leagues alike must take a stand to protect their players. There have been multitudes of recent studies on head and brain injuries in sports and the results are troubling. Jenna McLaughlin states that, “Scientific studies have shown that rates of injury in soccer are comparable to football, ice hockey, lacrosse, and rugby.” When most think of head injuries in sports, soccer seems to slip the minds of those in the conversation. Soccer has a high risk of head injuries that come from player-to-player contact, player-to-ground contact, and player-to-goalpost contact (McLaughlin 1). When looking at the impact of collisions from player-to-player contact, all aspects and possibilities must be considered. Soccer players can collide heads when driving the ball down field...
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... The Ice Bucket Challenge and a simple hit in the head are nothing compared to ALS and CTE’s. ALS and CTE’s are horrific diseases that impact the lives of people every year. They have recently became an even bigger issue as more and more young adults have been getting diagnosed with these diseases. Specifically, young athletes have been the victims of these diseases and now the sports world is reacting by making sports safer, even if it means changing up the game. Changing up the game is causing a lot of corruption in the sports world because people believe the game can’t be played right with recent rule changes that will affect what the game is all about. They believe...
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...Head Injuries In America, one of the most popular sports is the game of football. Programs in high school have been around since early in the 20th century. It is a very widespread sport, especially at the high school level. Football is a very violent, active sport and can cause many injuries such as leg, shoulder, arm, head and neck being the most severe. This fun and entertaining sport is very popular but it is getting progressively more dangerous as time goes on. Severe brain and neck injuries occur in the sport with more and more happening each year. The National Federation of State High School Association needs to take charge to protect its athletes and stop this rising problem by making specific rules against head to head contact. Head to head contact can be extremely dangerous and cause very serious problems for all high school football players. In 2009, 250,000 people age nineteen and younger were treated in emergency rooms for concussions and other sports related brain injuries in the country. That was an increase from 150,000 in 2001. Did you know that high school athletes sustain an estimated 136,000 to 300,000 concussions per year (Moms Team)? Out of all the patients who were admitted into an emergency department with a traumatic brain injury (TBI), 24.7 percent obtained their head injury while playing football (Swarm Interactive). That is higher than any other sport or activity associated with TBIs. Brain injuries contribute one third of all injury-related...
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...Traumatic Brain Injury Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a serious health issue in the United States. Each year traumatic brain injuries affect millions of Americans. Some cases often result in death while those that survive are left with severe disabilities. Every twenty-one seconds, one person in the United States is sustained with a TBI. In 2013 alone, 1.5 million Americans suffered from traumatic brain injuries. What exactly is a TBI? A traumatic brain injury is defined as an alteration in brain function or other evidence of brain pathology, caused by an external force. TBI’s can be classified as congenital, perinatal, or acquired. In congenital and perinatal cases of TBIs, children are born with such diseases and/or physical abnormalities. Two subcategories of an acquired TBI are non-traumatic and traumatic. From there traumatic brain injuries are broken down into two more sub-categories called open and closed injuries. Open head injury is a skull fracture that is driven into the brain caused by high- momentum causes or objects to the head where as a closed head injury is a mild physical trauma, but still keeping the skull intact. Typical causes for TBI’s are falls, motor vehicle- traffic accidents, struck by/collision accidents, and sports injuries. The two main causes are motor vehicle- traffic accidents and sports injuries. Motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of all head injuries. These accidents cause about 28% of traumatic brain injuries. The dramatic...
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...High contact sports such as hockey football and lacrosse have been around for many years. The injuries that occur to the players during these sports have been around for just as long. The human body is not designed to take on blows over and over again in our lives, if it were our organs and structures would be made up of much stronger materials. The standards of today are based around an activity that has many negative outcomes. People have been building their whole lives around sports for a long time. Many men push schooling aside and focus on their career choice to be a pro athlete. Time and time again, however, the case arises where an athlete gets injured and in the blink of an eye their career as a pro is destroyed. Choosing to be a pro...
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...Sports can cause multiple injuries to any area of the body ,but the worst part of the body affected by sports injury is the brain. Damage to the brain can be caused by a sudden movement which causes the brain to be rattled around in the skull. Due, to your brain being rattled around you can suffer from a concussion, which can lead you to be diagnosed of one of the two major diseases caused by multiple concussions, ALS and CTE. ALS and CTE are two major diseases caused by concussion in sports or any other activity. One of the diseases you can get from multiple concussions,is ALS ,which stands for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. ALS can not only be caused by excessive concussions but also smoking,toxins,warfare,and too much exercise. In other words this means that ALS will weaken every part of the body except for your brain.This is also known as the Lou Gehrig Disease. Symptoms of...
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...MJT04 December 3, 2014 Concussion Management Process Over the years, there have been many increases in sports concussions. This article on Sport Concussion, 2010 states that on average 3-5% of all sports and recreational injures are head injuries. They also say that patients younger than 20 are more likely to suffer a sport relate head injury. Concussions are becoming better recognized in sports injuries. Successful management of concussions in sports is essential to reduce long-term harmful outcomes (Aubry 6-11, Giola 14). This paper will focus on effective steps in a concussion management system and organizational commitment for youth sports. There are three goals that are considered in concussion management. The first goal is to safeguard the student athlete; brain injuries are the highest attention level. The second goal is to expedite recovery to sports and normal activities and the third goal is to decrease the athletic program’s risk and accountability. To address the need to establish operative concussion management in sports, ten systematic steps and commitments will be discussed (Lovell, Giola 14). Saunders 2 The first step relates to pre-injury knowledge and preparation. This is a basic understanding of the injury, its evaluation and treatment. The second step addresses the pre-season baseline testing. Base Line testing...
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...have casted a dark shadow over sports throughout the last decade. They are the most common head and brain injuries suffered by athletes. A concussion is “a type of traumatic brain injury that is caused by a blow to the head or body, a fall, or another injury that jars or shakes the brain inside the skull” ("Concussion - WebMD: Causes, Symptoms, Diagnosis, Treatment, and Prevention"). The major problem regarding concussions is that they are not visible to the human eye. Concussions occur all the way from Pop Warner leagues as a child to the professional leagues. My friend has played football his whole life. Unfortunately, he has been plagued by concussions ever since he started to play the sport. He is a prime example of an ordinary kid who plays a sport he loves, but has altered his future forever. Commissioners are actively trying to reduce the number of head injuries that occur while playing. However, the main problem regarding head injuries in sports is that players tend to rush back to their respective sports, without proper testing and treatment. This results in athletes risking their playing careers, a life filled with long-term head complications, and eventually putting their lives in danger. As an injured athlete, there comes a point where you have to ask yourself, is rushing back to the game really worth a lifetime filled with head injuries and complications? So what do team doctors need to do differently when treating head injuries? Junior Seau and Sidney Crosby...
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