NEW ORLEANS, March 14, 2014-- A new study presented today at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) found no link between neurocognitive function and years of football play in adolescent athletes.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), between 1.6 and 3.8 million sports and recreation-related concussions
occur each year in the U.S., most of which go untreated by medical
professionals.
Concussions and sub-concussive hits (repeated head blows
without immediate, visible signs or symptoms of neurological damage) are
especially common in high school football. Several recent research
studies have found a link between sub-concussive head blows in football
and neurocognitive decline in adolescents.
In a new study, researchers retrospectively reviewed data obtained between August 1998 and August 2001 on 1,289 New Orleans
high school football players, including years of participation, age and
concussion history, as well as scores on common neuropsychological
tests: digit symbol substitutions (DSS), pure reaction time (PRT) and
choice reaction time (CRT). The mean player age was 15.9, and the mean
play time, 4.4 years. Only 4 percent of the athletes in the study
suffered a sport concussion.
Age
was positively related to performance on the DSS task, but years of
football remained significantly and positively associated with DSS after
controlling for age. There was no association between history of
concussion and DSS, despite adding concussion to the model with years of
football participation, and no significant association between years of
football participation and PRT.
"The
correlation between the number of years of football participation and
the performance on the digit symbol substitution test does not support
the hypothesis that participation in a collision sport negatively
affects neurocognitive function," said Gregory W. Stewart,
MD, co-director of the Sports Medicine Program and associate professor
of orthopaedics at the Tulane School of Medicine, and lead author of the
study. "The implication is that the playing of football is not in and
of itself detrimental."
However,
the research does "reinforce the need to educate high school and
college athletes to better understand the importance of being honest
about their (concussion) symptoms so that they can be treated
appropriately," said Dr. Stewart, who also is chief of the Division of
Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Tulane. "Many kids play with symptoms that they don't necessarily equate with a concussion."
Concussion
symptoms include balance problems, dizziness, drowsiness, fatigue,
difficulty concentrating or communicating, headache, irritability,
memory difficulties, nausea, vomiting, nervousness, numbness or
tingling, sensitivity to light or noise, sleeping more than usual or
having difficulty falling asleep, vision problems, feeling emotional or
mentally foggy, according to STOP (Sports Trauma and Overuse Prevention) Sports Injuries,
a national education program to prevent overuse and traumatic injuries
in kids. The program is a collaborative effort initiated by the American Society of Sports Medicine (ASSOM), in partnership with AAOS and eight other health and child advocacy organizations, to keep kids on the field and out of the operating room.
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SOURCE American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons
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