Health & Safety

Teens who continue to engage in full cognitive activity after sport-related concussion take from 2 to 5 times longer to recover than those who limit such activity, a new study has found. The findings provide important support for current concussion guidelines recommending cognitive rest during the initial stages of recovery from concussion.

A history of concussion is associated with more than a 3-fold increased risk of a current diagnosis of depression, even after controlling for age, sex, parental mental health, and socioeconomic status, finds a new study, which recommends that clinicians caring for youth with concussion be aware of this association and screen youth for symptoms of depression.

The Princeton (NJ) Public Library will be hosting a free screening of the PBS documentary, "The Smartest Team: Making High School Football Safer," on Tuesday, January 7th from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. Rosemarie Scolaro Moser, PhD, Director of the Sports Concussion Center of New Jersey and a featured expert in "The Smartest Team," and the documentary's producer/director, Brooke de Lench, Founder and Publisher of MomsTEAM.com, will be on hand after the screening to answer questions parents, coaches and athletes have about the making of the film or about concussions in general.

Lower back injuries are the third most common injuries suffered in athletes under age 18, with many injuries severe enough to sideline young athletes for one-to-six months, and put them at future risk for long-term back problems.

Teen athletes derive many positive benefits from participating in sports, but their increased risk of sports-related injuries may also heighten their risk for medication misuse and abuse, especially for boys, finds a recent study in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

The lack of a systematic approach to making return-to-play (RTP) decision-making has resulted in a high degree of variability among sports medicine doctors in weighing different factors, with some factors considered important by athletes, teams, coaches, and parents viewed as unimportant by doctors in the RTP decision, finds a new study.

Previous concussions and match play are all but certain to increase the risk of concussions, but the jury is still out on whether other factors, such as sex, playing position, playing level, style of play, environment and injury mechanism, also increase concussion risk, finds a first-of-its-kind, evidence-based systematic review of the scientific literature.

Child-specific tools need to be developed and used for the diagnosis, recovery-assessment and management of their concussions, focusing less on return to play as the goal as return to learn, a new study recommends.

Preliminary data from a study of retired professional English soccer players has found that, once their playing careers end, the chronic low-level head trauma they sustained from repetitive heading does not put them at greater risk of long-term cognitive decline than the general population.

Despite increased helmet use, the number of snow-sports-related traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) keeps rising, prompting calls by experts to implement a variety of targeted prevention strategies, with a special focus on educating parents about the protective value of helmets and the role modeling effect the parent's use has on their child's decision to wear a helmet.