Number of concussions plaguing student athletes raises alarm
Data show concussion reports on the rise, especially in women's sports
By Karen Anderson and Kevin Rothstein
It started with a simple fall while cheerleading, but instead of sitting out, Ryan Farrell says she was told to keep cheering.
But that first fall also gave her a concussion, and her continued cheering caused further trauma to her already damaged brain.
“My brain kept getting battered back and forth in my head as I was jumping, flipping, stunting,” she told 5 Investigates’ Karen Anderson.
Minutes later, she collapsed and fell into a weeks-long coma. She had to learn how to walk again and live with a brain injury.
Farrell is outraged when she heard the latest statistics about concussions and youth sports: 1 in 5 middle and high school athletes in Massachusetts likely had a concussion from sports, the state Department of Public Health tells 5 Investigates.
Even worse, about half of those athletes say they kept playing, a frightening statistic considering that another hit to the head while already concussed can cause exponentially worse damage.
"It makes me angry, it scares me,” Farrell said.
It’s also disappointing to Chris Nowinski, one of the first to publicly warn about the dangers of concussions after suffering them first as a Harvard football player and then a professional wrestler.
“Everybody needs to appreciate the biggest problem we have is we're not diagnosing concussions when they happen,” he said. “They keep playing and they get additional brain damage that doesn't need to be there.”
State health officials tell 5 Investigates there is not good research showing for sure how to reduce the number of concussions in sports.
One practice they encourage is to have athletic trainers on hand, people like Somerville Public School’s Michelle Kelly. She attends every football games and most other games, ready to pull a player after any sign of a concussion.
“They're teenagers and so they think they're invincible,” she said. “They're going to see what they can and cannot do just like if they sprain their ankle before they report the information to us.”
The football team also practices heads-up tackling with an eye towards reducing injury, and like other schools now limits hitting drills to two days a week.
State health regulations require schools to report how many concussions their students are getting.
But 5 Investigates examined every record submitted by schools this year and found at least 100 hadn't submitted by the Aug. 31 deadline.
Others reported just a few concussions or none, which experts say is likely far less than actually occurred.
So far 481 schools have submitted the data from the 2014-15 school year, reporting 13,963 head injuries, 4,558 of which were sustained in school sports.
The previous school year, 600 schools submitted data, reporting 15,340 head injuries, 5,508 of which were sustained in school sports.
Carlene Pavlos, director of the DPH’s Bureau of Community Health and Prevention, said the number of likely concussions still occurring is “frightening.”
“I don’t think there is a large groundswell out there of concern about that level of concussions happening to our young people. I think it’s one that we need to talk a lot more about so that we increase awareness,” she said.
Pavlos said the state works with schools to encourage compliance rather than punish them for not submitting concussion data.
Separately, there is a bill filed on Beacon Hill that would create a special commission to study youth sports concussions, including how often they occur, their primary causes and to examine sports rules to see if improvements can be made.
Dr. Michael O'Brien sees the impact of concussions first hand, treating patients at Boston Children's Hospital Sports Concussion Clinic.
"Some of the most disturbing issues with concussions are there is difficulty with cognition, with concentration and memory. With student athletes that can particularly be a problem. It's difficult to keep up in school," O'Brien said.
He says a community’s top priority should be identifying athletes who are injured so they can be kept from continuing to play and getting a second injury.
"The injuries that are most concerning are those not easily recognized by someone from the sidelines, sometimes not easily recognized by the athletes themselves,” he said. “We really want to make sure we are doing our best job to identify that athlete at risk. It's those athletes, if they are injured and not recognized and have continued collisions, those are the ones most likely to have an acceleration of symptoms ... and a prolonged recovery."
He says the most recent data nationwide show reports of concussions have gone up, with a greater increase in concussions in women's sports than men's sports.
He says there are studies to determine why, but so far no clear explanation. He says recent data also suggest a concussions in women’s soccer practices have gone up more than in competition.
He is encouraged by practice changes to protect the athletes, like reducing unnecessary collisions.
"Just doing repetitive tackling is not going to toughen up someone. It’s certainly not going to reduce their rates of concussions it’s just going to add more collisions and increase the rates of concussions,” he said.
Nicole Godaire, executive director of the Brain Injury Association of Massachusetts, wants everyone involved in youth sports – the athletes, coaches and parents – to be better at taking athletes out of play if there’s a chance of head injury.
Still, the public’s concussion awareness is far ahead of where it was 15 or 20 years ago, when the Brain Injury Association of Massachusetts was one of the early groups advocating for concussion safety.
“In the early years we did sports concussion conferences, but at that time, people really weren't interested in the prevention or the awareness or didn't think it was a concern,” Godaire said. “In the past when people did talk about they had a bell rung or they had a concussion, I don't think people looked at the seriousness that if you do have a concussion that there could be long term effects.”
Farrell is now a spokesperson for the Brain Injury Association of Massachusetts, determined to change attitudes of coaches, parents and student athletes.
"I don't care if it's the state championship and you're in the final seconds of sudden death overtime, it's not worth the rest of your life if you have sustained a concussion," she said. "You only get one brain."