Concussions A Risk For Athletes In All Sports: Henry Ford Study

DETROIT, MI — Young athletes are at risk for concussions in all sports, not just football, according to a recent study by Henry Ford Health Sports Medicine Research team that was released Tuesday. The study shows that young athletes are at risk for concussions because younger brains take longer to heal, according to the study.

The study suggests that high school athletes competing not only in football but in soccer, hockey, basketball, swimming, cheerleading and other sports are not only at risk for concussions, but may need a longer recovery that first thought. The study’s results were published by Orthopedics, a nationally recognized, peer-reviewed journal for orthopedic surgeons found that the most common sports for brain injuries were indeed football, hockey and soccer.

“We thought that concussion issues would be very short-lived,” said Vasilios Moutzouros, Henry Ford's chief of sports medicine and a co-author of the study. “That they wouldn’t have as many attention issues, that they’d be able to recover for their sport much more quickly. Our study found just the opposite.”

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s latest executive order allows the high school football season to begin Sept. 18. Football was reinstated by the Michigan High School Athletic Association after initially being postponed until spring 2021.

With football back in action with an adjusted six-game season, athletic trainers will once again be patrolling the sidelines and be on the lookout for signs of concussions. Other sports given the green light to compete this fall include soccer, volleyball, swimming and diving.

But the health system said these competitions will also present the potential for brain injuries from collisions, falls and impacts with the field of play.\

“The two sports, other than football, where concussions are common are soccer and hockey, although brain injuries can happen in any sport,” said Meaghan Rourke, one of more than 30 athletic trainers at Henry Ford who support sports programs at over 20 high schools, colleges and universities and professional teams in the tri-county area. “I went through a four-year period as an athletic trainer where I had at least one swimmer suffer a concussion. That's a sport you don't really think about in terms of concussions,” Rourke said.

Rourke said that in one instance a swimmer miscalculated her distance to the pool wall while doing the backstroke and bumped her head against the wall. As a result, the swimmer was out for more than a month with a concussion. Diving is another sport susceptible to brain injuries as the divers’ heads impact the surface of the water at high speeds generated from their dives, according to Rourke.

“Competitive cheerleading is another sport where I’ve seen concussions happen. The kids get very high in the air, and if they slip and fall when they are coming down, they can suffer serious head injuries,” Rourke said. “We usually have one or two athletes in that sport suffer concussions. Overall, I've probably had to deal with a concussion in every sport, including golf.”

The retrospective study looked at Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing scores at baseline testing and following concussions performed by neuropsychologists. The study found that memory ImPACT scores increased as players suffered repeated concussions.

The study examined the records of 357 high school athletes who were treated for concussions at Henry Ford from 2013 to 2016. The athletes age averaged between 14-18 with nearly 62 percent being boys. Football yielded the most concussions (27.7 percent), followed by hockey (21.8 percent), soccer (17 percent), basketball (9 percent) and cheerleading (4.2 percent). From the study’s participants, 72 played in “Other” sports and accounted for 20.3 percent of the total number of concussions. Overall, 14 percent reported suffering from amnesia and 33 percent reported a history of concussions.

Current MHSAA protocols call for a player showing concussion symptoms to be sidelined for at least 24 hours. Athletes at high schools staffed with a Henry Ford athletic trainer are sidelined for at least five days and follow a strict return to play protocol.

“We’re going to slowly bring them back,” Rourke said. “We don’t want to just throw them out there where they’re going to get hit again, and then they’re dealing with prolonged symptoms.”

The Henry Ford research team found that athletes with only one concussion required at least 30 days of recovery prior to returning to their sport while others who reported a second or more concussions required more recovery time.

The study team said it hopes that the results help start the conversation on how to more safely return student athletes to their sport after a brain injury.

“When you recognize that it can be up to 30 days to get a young student athlete back, you’re going to change your mind-set on how you advance them, in terms of how you push them, in terms of how you test them,” Moutzouros said,

Previously, the health system said, it was believed that brain injuries were related to a player’s age. The younger the player, the shorter the recovery time.

“We need more studies on the younger athletes,” Moutzouros said. “Many of us have children. We’re all worried about them and we want them to be safe. So, we need to recognize that this is a problem for the youth athlete.”