Head Trauma In Sports

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According to the Journal of Athletic Training, an astonishing 21 percent of traumatic brain injuries found among American children are a result of sports related activities. Sports related brain injuries range from mild to severe with some being fatal and others only requiring a little time away from the game. There are some sports that carry a larger hazard than others and have thus resulted in a larger number of documented injuries and fatalities but what does that say about the undocumented cases? Scientists have worked for years in search of permanent solutions and methods of preventing the occurrence of brain injuries in both collegiate and high school athletic programs but even with these preventative measures in place, injury is inevitable and continues to occur at alarming rates. There is a shocking relationship between these athletic programs and the vast number of recorded head injuries both traumatic and mild. These sports carry a certain beauty with a risk that outshines all that they have become to our society. Head trauma has been …show more content…
Classified as a MTBI (mild traumatic brain injury), concussions can come from many actions that result in sudden movement or shaking of the brain. When a hit or blow transfers force to the head, a concussion comes into play. Concussions commonly bring on minor symptoms that resolve within a few minutes with the more severe of cases lasting a couple of hours. Normally, temporary functional trouble becomes more evident than that of permanent neurological damage. The chances of one acquiring a concussion is entirely dependent on the amount of times force is applied to the head and the strength of the forces applied. In sports such as football, blows to the upper body occur more frequently than they would in sports like tennis thus resulting in a much higher number of reported concussion