How are sports-related concussions treated?
Informative Speech
Cole Finkbeiner
According to Megan Scudellari’s article in the Boston Globe “4 in 10 Concussed student athletes stay on the field.” Too many concussed athletes will either return to play or never leave the field. What exactly is a concussion? According to Merriam Webster, the definition of a concussion is “a stunning, damaging, or shattering effect from a hard blow.” Concussions are actually more common than you think. These injuries to your brain occur all the time whether you’re playing a sport or not. “According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), each year, about 1.7 million Americans sustain some form of traumatic brain injury (TBI), including concussions” (“Head Injuries”) That is right 1.7 million and that is just in America! Why are concussions such an important topic that is often discussed? This is because of how important your brain is to your body. Every single bump, hit, or knock on your head affects your brain and your body. In an article on head injuries from World of Sports Science “The head, containing the most important human organ, the brain, is the nerve center of the body and is built upon the skeletal structure of the skull and the cervical spine. These bones both protect the brain, and move the head upward, downward, and rotationally.”
How exactly do these injuries occur? Concussions can occur in a large number of ways and every injury is different. Just like there are not two injuries that are exactly the same, there are not two concussions that are exactly the same. As Robinson states in The Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine “A concussion occurs when the head hits or is hit by an object or when the brain is jarred against the skull, with sufficient force to cause temporary loss of function in the higher centers of the brain.”
Concussions are constantly changing. What we thought 10 years ago about concussions is outdated; today, we know much more about the impact of concussions on the brain and how best to treat them. As specialists find out more about the brain and its function, the treatment for injuries change. Scientists and doctors study the fastest way to recover from these injuries and implement the information into helping athletes. Before there was information on brain injuries the system was very simple. After receiving a knock to the head the athlete was taken off the field. He or she would be asked simple questions, such as birth date and if the athlete could answer then, he or she would be able to play. Today, teams have trainers to assess the players. Seeing a trainer is essential to a fast recovery for an athlete. They can provide athletes with a diagnosis and the correct recovery processes. Currently, if you receive a head related injury in a game, you are unable to return to play. This is due to the chance of second impact syndrome. Second impact syndrome is when an athlete receives a second blow to the head shortly after receiving the first. Second impact syndrome is a major problem in the careers of athletes. In his article on treatments of concussions, Lerner says, “Boxers, ice hockey players, and American football players are vulnerable to these repeated occurrences, and numerous athletes in these sports have been forced to early retirement from competition due to concussion” Lerner stresses how it could cause the end of certain athletes’ careers.
Remember towards the beginning of your sports season when your team gathered in front of computers . You sat down and watched different words and shapes come on the screen and you tried to memorize whether they showed or not. That was your concussion baseline test and, chances are, if you played a sport you, took one. These are essential to helping athletes with concussions. This helps to see your baseline in case you do receive a concussion; you can retake the test and have your scores analyzed after a concussion. Baseline tests are one of the major factors in determining how bad your head injury is. Another reason young athletes take baseline tests is because of the developing brain. An article on youth brain development says that “The young brain takes longer to recover from concussion than the adult brain.” Student athletes are more at risk than professional athletes because the brain is still developing. The young brain takes time to grow, develop, and reach its full potential. This causes the injury to last longer and creates more of a risk for long term damage to the brain.
Dr. Charles Tator helps to show how prevention of a concussion should work: “To prevent concussions and their consequences, physicians need to advise patients about safe practices and, when symptoms persist, advise whether to desist temporarily or permanently from activities with a high risk for concussion.” The word needs to spread about how to prevent and treat concussions. Concussions can be serious injuries if not treated properly. They can cause life long effects on your body. Due to concussions being able to have lasting effects on your body they’re being taken more seriously. Don’t forget this shocking statistic “Brain injuries cause more deaths than any other type of sports injuries” (Robinson).
Annotated Bibliography
Robinson, Richard, and Laura Jean Cataldo. "Concussion." The Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine, edited by Jacqueline L. Longe, 5th ed., Gale, 2015. Gale In Context: Science https://go.gle.com/ps/retrieve.do tabID=Reference&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchResultsTy
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ALE%7CZATMSJ267008524&searchId=R1&userGroupName=va_p_wakef_s&inPS=true
Here Robinson talks about how a concussion occurs and what happens. I think this could be very beneficial to my informative speech and provides information I could use to inform people about how concussions affect everyone. The author also touches on the subject of being treated and how important it is to see a doctor. Robinson provides a large amount of information for me to use.
Scudellari, Megan. "Almost 4 in 10 Concussed Student-Athletes Stay on the Field.." BostonGlobe, 30 Oct 2016, ProQuest, https://explore.proquest.com/sirsissuesresearcher/document/2265953762?searchid=157007999&accountid=338.
Scudellari focuses in on the effects of concussions and how they affect the athletes and their careers. She talks about how many athletes return to play with a concussion which creates the chance of making the brain injury worse. This could really help me to inform the audience in my speech about the effects of these injuries and how you should go about treating them.
Tator, Charles H. "Concussions and their consequences: current diagnosis, management and prevention." CMAJ: Canadian Medical Association Journal, 6 Aug. 2013, p. 975+. Gale In Context: Science, https://go.gale.com/ps/retrieve.do?tabID=Journals&resultListType
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Tator talks about the recovery of these athletes and the course of action they take in order to recover as fast as possible. He adds in elements about children and how their brain takes longer to recover. Rest is a crucial part of recovery. Tator provides a great amount of information about many different topics and goes into detail which will be great for creating my speech.
"Head injuries." World of Sports Science, edited by K. Lee Lerner and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner, Gale, 2011. Gale In Context: Science, https://go.gale.com/ps/retrieve.dotabID=Reference&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchResultsType=SingleTab&searchType=TopicSearchForm¤tPosition=4&docId=GALE%7CCV2644830217&docType=Topic+overview%2C+Disease%2FDisorder+overview&sort=Relevance&contentSegment=ZXBEMOD1&prodId=SCIC&contentSet=GALE%7CCV2644830217&topicId=AAA000032907&searchId=&userGroupName=va_p_wakef_s&inPS=true
I find this source to be important because of how the author uses statistics and studies to provide evidence that the claims being made are very accurate. They used organizations such as the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. These studies show that the author’s points are correct and have been proven This author also touches on how to prevent head injuries, which I find would be useful for my informative speech.