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More than 170,000 children each year are treated in emergency rooms for sports-related traumatic brain injuries.
Hospital emergency rooms treat more than 170,000 children each year for sports-related traumatic brain injuries, including concussions, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. What do parents and coaches need to know about sports concussions in order to protect their kids and players' A commentary by Dr. Christopher Giza , director of the UCLA Steve Tisch BrainSPORT program , about sports, concussions and neuroscience appears in the June 21 online edition of Neuron. Here, Giza, a national leader in concussion research, offers a game plan for where concussion research is headed: 1. Accurate diagnosis is essential. "Concussions are the most complex injury to the most complicated organ in the human body," said Giza, who is also a professor of pediatrics, neurology and neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital. "There is no magic-bullet, catch-all test for diagnosing the disorder." Giza said that although finding a single reliable test will be unlikely, doctors hope that blood work, brain imaging and electrical tests will improve concussion diagnosis and help them monitor recovery. "A physician's diagnosis is often informed by the patient's reported symptoms," he said.
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