While cruising Facebook over the weekend, a great post from Advanced Orthopaedic Centers of South Jersey popped up on my feed, discussing a very relevant and hot topic right now, concussions, which are not just in contact sports like Football and Hockey, but in all walks of life. The striking note which really stands out over at the Advanced Ortho page states the following:
In today’s sports, concussions are part of the game. Data collected from emergency department visits show:
- Roughly 300,000 concussions are reported every year.
- 62% increase (153,375 to 248,418) in nonfatal traumatic brain injuries between 2001 and 2009.
- 3.8 million reported and unreported sport and recreation related concussions occurring each year in the United States.
The link to the article can be found at: http://www.advancedorthocenters.com/concussions/
Check out the article when you have some time, very well written and researched. The article discusses several things about concussions, like why are they now being discussed more than they have in the past. I feel this is why more concussions are getting diagnosed than they have in the past. Even more so, big time movies are now being made about concussions with big stars like Will Smith and the NFL. The signs and symptoms of concussions are various, and not always well defined and this is why precaution is always best in any case of head trauma.
The basics of a concussion never change, if you feel like you have had any type of head trauma, it’s always best to see a medical professional. As we see changes not only in football being made, just recently the appropriate age for heading a soccer ball was raised to the age of 12 to help limit concussions and repeated cumulative blows to the head resulting from heading. If you have further questions or need an appointment with our office, please don’t hesitate to give us a call!