Atlantic Ave Magazine July 2023

health & beauty | pain relief
By dr. john conde
Youth Sports and Concussions:
The Argument for
Pre-Season Brain Screening
A concussion is known as mild traumatic brain
injury. It is most commonly defined as a head
injury that momentarily affects brain functions.
Concussions occur when an impact to the head or body causes
your head and brain to move rapidly back and forth. This movement
causes the brain to bounce around inside the skull creating
chemical changes in your brain. If the impact is severe enough,
neurons within the brain can be stretched and damaged producing
a traumatic brain injury. The youth sports producing the most concussions
are tackle football, boy’s ice hockey, girl’s soccer, and boy’s
lacrosse. Here are some remarkably interesting numbers concerning
concussions and youth sports: 33% of all concussions happen
at practice, 47% of all sports related concussions occur during high
school football, 1 in 5 high school athletes will sustain a concussion
during the season, 33% of high school athletes that sustain a concussion
report 2 or more in the same year, 39% of athletes that have numerous
concussions are shown to increase catastrophic head injury
leading to more permanent impairment. To add to these daunting
numbers is the fact that most athletes with concussions rarely lose
consciousness therefore they may not be reported.
Many youth and recreational organizations and high schools are
implementing programs to assess for the baseline brain activity of
their athletes prior to the start of the season. In essence, a snapshot
of the athlete’s brain function is taken prior to the athletic competition
to be able to compare neurological function after a concussion
and determine the amount of injury sustained. These tests
also provide a baseline marker for objective “return to play” benchmarks.
This takes away the subjective reporting of a child which
in many cases cannot even accurately describe what they are feeling.
Because concussions are much more difficult to quantify than
a ligament tear or fracture, traditional imaging such as MRI and CT
are not fruitful. However, there are now several evidence-based
technologies available to assess and treat these concussions.
Headache, dizziness, disorientation, confusion, sleep disturbance,
nausea, and irritability are all symptoms associated with
concussions, however the challenge is in the quantification process.
The management of the concussion must be organized into
a pre-season assessment, incident report and comparable, treatment,
follow-up assessment, and return to play. The piece we are
going to look at here is the pre-season assessment. This is going to
be composed of the neurological aspects that are most commonly
seen injured in athletes with concussions. These are postural stability,
working memory, reaction/processing times, set switching,
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learning, and dynamic and static visual acuity. Norms have been
established for age groups and gender which makes comparing
relatively easy. Once the data is collected and areas of deficiency
identified, treatment is implemented and can be very precise. The
athlete is then re-examined after the course of treatment and then
allowed to “return to play” if the benchmarks have been reached.
The equipment that is gaining the most notoriety for the assessment
and treatment is the Hit Check Cognitive Assessment Aid, Dynavision
D2, Force Plate Posturography, and Medical Virtual Reality
Assessment and Rehabilitation tool. The next time your child plays
a sport, prior to the season get a baseline assessment to ensure his
or her brain health.
COPYRIGHTED
Conde Center For
ChiroPRACTIC Neurology
401 West Atlantic Avenue, Suite #014
Delray Beach, FL 33444
561-330-6096
www.thecondecenter.com