Concussion is an injury associated with sports and is most often identified with football, ice hockey, boxing and martial arts. There is different levels of concussion or traumatic brain injury (TBI), including mild, moderate, and severe. Large numbers of athletes participate in these sports; youth, high school, collegiate, professional. Concussion is an injury that results from a wide variety of mechanisms and ages, levels ranging from a simple daze to the inability of doing daily activities. According to Dr. David T. Bernhardt, Director of Adolescent and Sports Medicine Fellowship, concussion is defined as “a condition in which there is a traumatically induced alteration in mental status, with or without an associated loss of consciousness”
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Football players of all ages suffer from concussions throughout the year. Primary mechanism of concussion in football is helmet to helmet collisions and/or whiplash from a tackle. The number of collisions involving the head to head is very high. In the course of 20 years, concussions in the National Football League (NFL) remain an important issue. In 2004, Dr. Bennet I. Omalu, Departments of Pathology and Epidemiology, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, diagnose, through a the autopsy of a retired professional football player, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). This case directly affected the overall direction of concussions in football. A story well-known from the Hollywood movie called "Concussion" starring Will Smith. Prior to Dr. Omalu’s diagnosis, the NFL’s Committee on Mild Traumatic Brain Injury had several professional players retire prematurely because of post-concussion syndrome (Pellman, 2003). This committee was formed in 1994 to study this trend and replaced terminology post-concussion syndrome with mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) (Omalu, 2005). “Researchers with the Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University have now identified the degenerative disease known as CTE in 96 percent of NFL players that they’ve examined and in 79 percent of all football players” …show more content…
Reoccurring or repeated concussions may lead to more serous problem like learning disabilities and psychiatric problems. According to Leon-Carrion (2003), “Pre-adolescent youth with a traumatic brain injury may never fully develop the social and cognitive skills characteristic of adults and may be more violent than those without such an injury”. Moreover, concussions range from a brief period of neural dysfunction (bell rung) to loss of consciousness or semi-lucent and more serious amnesia (per cited Roberts, 1996). It is important to understand that signs and symptoms presented at the time of injury may disappear quickly, or they may linger for longer periods of
Football players of all ages suffer from concussions throughout the year. Primary mechanism of concussion in football is helmet to helmet collisions and/or whiplash from a tackle. The number of collisions involving the head to head is very high. In the course of 20 years, concussions in the National Football League (NFL) remain an important issue. In 2004, Dr. Bennet I. Omalu, Departments of Pathology and Epidemiology, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, diagnose, through a the autopsy of a retired professional football player, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). This case directly affected the overall direction of concussions in football. A story well-known from the Hollywood movie called "Concussion" starring Will Smith. Prior to Dr. Omalu’s diagnosis, the NFL’s Committee on Mild Traumatic Brain Injury had several professional players retire prematurely because of post-concussion syndrome (Pellman, 2003). This committee was formed in 1994 to study this trend and replaced terminology post-concussion syndrome with mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) (Omalu, 2005). “Researchers with the Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University have now identified the degenerative disease known as CTE in 96 percent of NFL players that they’ve examined and in 79 percent of all football players” …show more content…
Reoccurring or repeated concussions may lead to more serous problem like learning disabilities and psychiatric problems. According to Leon-Carrion (2003), “Pre-adolescent youth with a traumatic brain injury may never fully develop the social and cognitive skills characteristic of adults and may be more violent than those without such an injury”. Moreover, concussions range from a brief period of neural dysfunction (bell rung) to loss of consciousness or semi-lucent and more serious amnesia (per cited Roberts, 1996). It is important to understand that signs and symptoms presented at the time of injury may disappear quickly, or they may linger for longer periods of