Sports concussions must be taken seriously

How many times have you been to your child's game or been watching some other sporting event in person or on television and seen someone who has had their "bell rung" get up slowly and then return to the game either right away or after a few minutes?

It happens less today than it did 20-30 years ago, even less than only 10 years ago. Even with this decrease, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that as many as 3.8 million sports and recreation related concussions occur each year in the U.S.

What has changed over the last few decades to reduce this occurrence? First and foremost, it's how much the medical and science community has learned about not only about what happens to the brain at the moment of impact but also the short- and long-term dangers and effects of a concussion.

So, what is a concussion? A concussion is a mild traumatic brain injury, characterized by a change in mental status. Worst case, there may be a loss of consciousness, but most concussions result in confusion, dizziness, headache, nausea or vomiting, vision and/or balance problems, sensitivity to light and/or sound, tinnitus (ringing in the ears' or a tingling feeling.

The athlete may also have a glazed-over or glassy-eyed look, move slowly or clumsily, answer questions slowly, be confused about the score, where they are or who they are playing, and even have memory loss from moments before the "hit" to several hours earlier.

It is also important to know that sometimes symptoms may not present themselves for hours and sometimes even days later and should be taken as serious, if not more serious, than those immediate symptoms.

Also important to note are the severity of the symptoms themselves. If they become worse, or more symptoms are reported, this is a sign that you should seek more advanced medical treatment.

What else should you know about concussions? First, and most important, is that 'return to play" is a medical decision, not a coaching or parent decision. If a concussion is suspected or possible, an athlete should not be returned to play without clearance from a licensed health care provider schooled in concussion evaluation and management.

Second, once a person has a concussion, they are four times more likely to sustain a second concussion, and it takes less of a blow to cause another one.

Third, the recovery period from a concussion can take days, and sometime even weeks to occur. Full recovery from a concussion before returning to play is so important because of what is known as second-impact syndrome (a person suffers another concussion before the symptoms from an earlier concussion have subsided) because it can have devastating effects. This condition is often fatal and those who survive are severely disabled.

So what is the message here? As stated so well by the CDC in "Heads Up: Concussion in Youth Sports," their concussion awareness program — "When in doubt, sit them out."

Michael Carey lives in Whitefish.