Safety

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.

A growing number of studies challenge the conventional wisdom that inadequate athlete concussion knowledge is the principal barrier to increased concussion symptom reporting.  Because educating youth about the dangers of concussion is unlikely to improve concussion reporting, they say other ways need to be found to increase reporting, among them being to enlist coaches to help create an environment where athletes feel safe in reporting.

The recent move by the Princeton (NJ) school district to require headgear for all middle-school soccer, field hockey and lacrosse players has generated controversy. MomsTEAM's sports concussion neuropsychologists has concerns about the effectiveness of such headgear and says the focus needs to be on education, training, rules enforcement, and hiring more athletic trainers.

As many as four out of ten of possible concussions sustained by high school athletes are never reported to a coach or medical professional, with less than one in seven  'bell-ringers' being reported, finds an important new study.

Nearly half of sports-related facial fractures among children occur in baseball and softball, says a new study in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, many of which could be prevented if players wore face shields while fielding.

Balanced neck strength may reduce the acceleration of the head during the act of heading a soccer ball, thus reducing the risk of brain injury from such low grade hits, says a 2013 study. The study adds to a growing body of evidence that strengthening neck muscles may be a way to reduce head injury risk from concussion and repetitive sub-concussive trauma.

There is good news and bad news on the youth sports injury front. The good news is that sports and recreation musculoskeletal injuries declined 12.4 percent in the U.S. over the past 10 years for children ages 5 to 14 years. The bad news: injuries in football and soccer went up, says a new study.

A survey of high school athletic directors, coaches, and certified athletic trainers in Michigan finds that, while concussion education is very common in football, less than half of girls' soccer players received such education.

Girls don't appear to be worse off after sports-related concussion than boys, either in terms of concussion symptoms or on neurocognitive tests measuring reaction time and visual memory, a new study finds.

Pre- or early adolescence appears to be the best time to start a neuromuscular training program in order to reduce the number of injuries female athletes suffer to their anterior cruciate ligaments, says a new study.