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No More Challenging Problem
Where Experts Agree
Advice To Parents: Be Proactive
Are Children More Vulnerable To Brain Injury?

No More Challenging Problem Team physicians, athletic trainers, and other personnel responsible for the medical care of athletes face no more challenging problem than the recognition and management of concussions (generally defined as injury to the brain caused by a sudden acceleration or deceleration of the head that results in any immediate, but temporary, alteration in brain functions, such as loss of consciousness, blurred vision, dizziness, amnesia or loss of memory). No consensus has developed in the medical community on either the definition

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It is up to a physician, in the exercise of his or her clinical judgment, to decide when an athlete should be allowed to return to play a contact or collision sport after suffering a concussion. Experts, however, do agree on one thing: that an athlete should never return to contact or collision sports while still suffering post-concussion symptoms at rest and with exertion. To allow such an athlete to return to play risks not only cumulative brain injury, but also Second-Impact Syndrome (SIS), which occurs when an athlete who sustains a head injury - often a concussion or something worse, such as a cerebral contusion (bruised brain) - sustains a second head injury before symptoms associated with the first injury have cleared (i.e. healed). Not surprisingly, it would also be against the recommendations of all current guidelines. [For an article comparing the three most commonly used guidelines, click here.

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Article Updated: August 23, 2007

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