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Where You Got Hit On The Head Doesn’t Influence Concussion Outcomes
Researchers say impact location has little effect on concussion outcome according to the findings of their study on football player-to-player collisions.
“A more complete understanding of concussions in high school football is needed to assist clinicians in diagnosing and managing concussed athletes,” wrote Zachary Y. Kerr, PhD, MPH, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and colleagues in Pediatrics.
The researchers used data collected from the National High School Sports-Related Injury Surveillance Study from 2008-2009 to 2012-2013 to assess what sort of hits in football were the most likely to caused brain injury and which lead to the most severe outcomes.
In their report, they show that most concussions related to player-to-player collisions occurred from front-of-the-head (44.7%) and side-of-the-head impacts (22.3%). Despite this, impact location was not associated with the number of symptoms reported, prevalence of reported symptoms, symptom resolution time, or length of time to return to playing.
Loss of consciousness due to concussion was still notably lower than most people believe, although the majority were caused from top-of-the-head impacts (8.0%).
