We recently blogged about a report that showed that more high school football players are sustaining catastrophic brain injuries, suggesting football coaches and officials at the high school level might not be making enough of an effort to prevent head-first hits. A new study reinforces the point that school athletic staff as well as medical professionals, play crucial roles in protecting student athletes from brain injuries.
The study, published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, reports that younger athletes and female athletes who suffer a concussion exhibit more symptoms and take longer to recover than older athletes and male athletes. Researchers already knew that women are more likely to suffer a concussion than men playing the same sport, but this latest study explores how the effects of a concussion vary based on sex and age. It suggests that anatomical factors increase female and younger athletes’ vulnerability to a concussion’s dangers, so these athletes’ health might need to be managed more carefully following a concussion.
“Parents need to understand that if their daughter has a concussion, that they may potentially take longer to recover from that concussion than their son who is a football player,” Tracey Covassin, a Michigan State kinesiology professor, told the New York Times’ health blog in a post about the study.
Parents do need to understand that—but so do other people responsible for young athletes’ health, like coaches and doctors. Has your child been harmed as a result of school or hospital neglect? Contact Hodes Milman for a free case evaluation. We’re aggressive personal injury and medical malpractice lawyers based in Orange County, serving all of California. We have the experience to take on the medical industry and have achieved multi-million dollar verdicts for our clients.
