People know what a concussion is but most people have no idea how concussions occur or how to recognize one. Knowing how people get concussions is important. The most common misconception is that having a hard skull prevents you from having a concussion. According to the AANS (2014), "The skull protects the brain against …show more content…
There many different ways to interpret the data that we have on sports related TBIs, but one thing is for sure, there are many different factors that people have to calculate. Before getting into these factors, taking a look at the overall statistics will help set the perspective on how important treatment of sports related TBIs need to be. The AANS measured, "Over 300,000 sports related concussions occur annually in the US" (As cited by ANNS, 2014, para. 5). If you averaged the number of sports related TBIs to the number of states, every state would have a number of 6000 concussions per year. The leading cause of death from sports related injury is a traumatic brain …show more content…
Age is only a number, but it also determines how much the body has matured. In a 2007 study that was also led by Dawn Comstock, "Concussions represented 8.9% of all high school athletic injuries and 5.8% of all collegiate athletic injuries” (pg. 2). This stat shows that the maturation of the human body is important in determining how hard you have to be hit to get a concussion. A study by Brad Gulla contradicts the maturation theory (2013), "High school athletes represented 58% of ER visits treat for sports related concussions...middle school students represented 17%...elementary school students represented 7%...and college students represented 8%" (para. 9). This contradictory statement makes lots of since though. In high school, most kids ' bodies are maturing and a traumatic event like a concussion can cause more damage than a college kid who is fully developed or an elementary child who is not in the maturing stage. Women and men mature differently and have different body mechanics and functions, which is why gender plays a huge part in concussion research. In the same 2007 study, Comstock and her team found that, "Girls sustained a higher rate of concussions and represented a greater proportion of total injuries than in guys." The Sports Institute evaluated data and found that (2012), "Females are twice as likely to sustain a concussion than males" (para. 11). While age and gender are