User:SMcFillin/sandbox

Concussions in All Sports

There are about 3.8 million sports related concussions every year. But only 50% of them are actually reported. Most people affected by sports related concussions are children and teens. Some children can take longer than adults to recover. Having once gotten a concussion gives athletes a greater chance of getting another concussion. 15 % of student athletes have gotten a concussion in the last 12 months. 69% of athletes that had symptoms of a possible concussion still played. 40% of athletes said there coach was not aware of their concussion.

Concussions are not only seen in football, as they are also observed in other sports, ice-hockey, basketball, boxing, etc. In the United States, football accounts for the highest incidence of concussions. Concussions in youth sports are especially scary, as their brains are still developing and having a concussion can severely damage the brain in that developmental process. Biomarkers, or indicators of severity or presence of some disease state, can provide insights on the management and evaluation of concussions. As concussions are a common occurrence in sports of all ages, using biomarkers could possibly determine the severity of concussions and even assist in giving each patient their own customized, more productive recovery plan.

Investigators from the University of Pittsburgh, University of Arkansas, Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine, and Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical College researched the instances of concussions in youth hockey in relation to age and activity setting. They prospectively followed 397 ice hockey players, aged 12-18 years, from 31 teams, during 2 competitive seasons. A concussion was defined as any mild closed head injury involving altered cognitive functioning, signs/symptoms, or loss of consciousness of no longer than 1 minute, after direct or indirect blow to the head. Thirty-seven concussions were diagnosed during 23,3069 AEs, 12,784 in practices, 10,585 in games. The combined concussion incidence rate (IR) for games and practices was 1.58 per 1000 AEs. The majority of concussions (N=26, 70.3%) occurred during games. Forty-three percent of mechanisms were attributed to illegal contact leading to a penalty. The article explains where concussions come from these hockey teams and the effects they have.

My contribution is our project was finding my sciencedirect.com source, using that information to produce a summary about our overall topic of concussions; I did this to fulfill the project’s requirements and enhance my knowledge in article editing. I believe I collaborated easily with my group and we understood and worked with each other fairly well. I completed this project to learn more about and maybe change my thoughts on wikipedia and its features. I will take away that wikipedia has more interesting features than I anticipated, yet I still do not fully trust the reliability of wikipedia and the information found on it.