[NewsBot]

The risk of concussions from football and some other sports is so serious that a qualified athletic trainer should always be on the field - at adult and children's games, and even at practice, a major doctors group said Monday.


for more.....
http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/...1cfb8a67b188c1

[Mark in Idaho]

Thanks for this post.

The first problem with this article is it misses the true issue. Most Certified Athletic Trainers are clueless about diagnosing concussions. The second problem is that the players do not want to self report.

A third issue is the need to understand sub-concussive impacts. Sub-concussive impacts are almost never considered since they do not usually produce immediate symptoms. Most injuries happen on the practice field where they get repeated due to the lesser level of Trainer supervision.

It is great that the media and NFL, NHL, NCAA and even high school sports are starting to take notice but there is a long way to go before our athletes will get the help and sound information they need.

The head slaps between team mates can be enough to be a sub-concussive impact. Routine bumps at the line of scrimmage produce hundreds of sub-concussive impacts in a single season to just one player.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has a Sport Training department that is leading the charge. Between Kevin Guskiewicz, Ph.D. head of the sport concussion program at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the research director for the Center for the Study of Retired Athlete, Julian Bailes, MD at University of West Virginia, and Robert C. Cantu, MD, FACS, FACSM, clinical professor, Neurosurgery Boston University School of Medicine; co-director, Center for The Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy (CSTE), Boston University Medical Center , there is plenty of sound research to show the lack of knowledge in the sport trainers at most schools. Even MD's tend to be miserable under-informed about 'return to play' issues.

But, we need to keep passing the word as articles get published that start the discussion.