Visits to emergency departments for concussions that occurred during organized team sports have increased dramatically over a 10-year period, and appear to be highest in ice hockey and football, says a study from Children's Hopsital.
The number of sports-related concussions is highest in high school-aged athletes, but the number in younger athletes is significant and rising. The study is published in the September 2010 issue of
Pediatrics and is now available online ahead of print.
In a review of national databases of emergency department (ED) visits, there were 502,000 visits to EDs for concussions in children aged 8 to 19 years in the period from 2001 through 2005; of those 65 percent were in the 14- to 19-year old age group while 35 percent were in the 8- to 13-year-old age group. Approximately half of all the ED visits for concussions were sports-related, and an estimated 95,000 of those visits were for concussions that occurred from one of the top five organized team sports: football, basketball, baseball, soccer and ice hockey. The researchers also note that in the period from 2001 through 2005, approximately four in 1,000 children aged 8 to 13 and six in 1,000 aged 14 to 19 had an ED visit for a sport-related concussion.
Lisa Bakhos, MD, is a recently graduated fellow who was practicing at Hasbro Children's Hospital at the time she led the study. Bakhos says, "Our data show that older children have an overall greater estimated number of ED visits for sport-related concussion compared to younger children. Younger children, however, represent a considerable portion of sport-related concussions, approximately 40 percent."