children’s health
DIZZINESS AND HEADACHE ARE THE MOST COMMONLY REPORTED SYMPTOMS RIGHT AFTER A CONCUSSION.
HITS
to the
HEAD
Concussion takes a toll on young athletes
BY KAREN FINUCAN CLARKSON
T
10 Gazette Health | Summer 2012
A CONCUSSION RESULTS FROM SOME SORT OF
trauma, direct or indirect, that causes the brain to move within the skull. Gerard A. Gioia, director of Children’s National Medical Center’s Safe Concussion Outcome Recovery & Education (SCORE) Concussion Program in Rockville, likens it to a yolk swaying inside a shaken egg. “The head takes a blow and the brain moves back and forth. As it stretches and strains, chemicals are released and a metabolic cascade unfolds,” he said. The result is a disruption in brain function.
A GAZETTE PUBLICATION
RECOGNIZING A CONCUSSION ISN’T ALWAYS EASY.
“Sometimes the symptoms are subtle or we link them to an existing problem,” said Gioia. Occasionally “we attribute behaviors to their being goofy teenagers.” While the signs of a concussion are usually evident within minutes, they can take hours to fully manifest and that, noted Gioia, may lead parents to think something else is the culprit. Concussions bring about a change in behavior, thinking or physical functioning. “It’s as though your software is messed up without any change in the structure of the hardware,” Andrew Tucker, M.D., head team physician for the Baltimore Ravens, said at the Whitman forum. Some symptoms—such as loss of consciousness, seizures, headache, disorientation, or slurred speech—mandate an immediate visit to the emergency room. A child who appears dazed, confused or forgetful, or who reports feeling nauseous, dizzy, sluggish or sensitive to light or noise following a hit, also may have suffered a concussion. “If after 72 hours a child is still symptomatic, [continued on 21]
PHOTO BY RAPHAEL NEGRON, COURTESY OF KAREN FINUCAN CLARKSON
Bradford Clarkson, son of the author, plays basketball in April after having recovered from a concussion sustained in December.
he blow to the head that temporarily transformed my reserved, contemplative 12year-old into a goofy, giddy chatterbox went virtually unnoticed. There was no bump or bruise where the other child’s knee had met his head. And, by all accounts, the blow barely broke his stride. No one picked up on his condition for nearly two hours. “If I didn’t know he’d been playing basketball, I would swear he’d been drinking,” my husband said with concern just minutes after Bradford had gotten home. Guiding our son through the evening’s events—a tough task given his inability to stay focused—it became clear that he had a concussion. With that, Bradford joined an estimated 3.8 million Americans who suffer from recreation-related concussions each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Annually, more than 170,000 people under 20 are treated in emergency rooms for traumatic brain injuries— including concussions—that happened during a sport or recreational activity.
Concerned by the number of students missing school or struggling with studies as a result of concussions, Alan Goodwin, principal at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, convened a panel of experts in April to address the topic. What’s unclear is whether students are suffering from more concussions or being diagnosed with greater frequency. Gioia contends it’s the latter. “There’s been an explosion in the diagnosis of concussions,” he said, due to increasing awareness among parents, coaches, school officials and student athletes. In the last 10 years, the number of children treated in emergency rooms for sports/recreation-related traumatic brain injuries, including concussion, has jumped 60 percent, the CDC reported.