Sports: The Role Of Concussions In Professional Sports

It seems that every week players are getting injured and carted off the field and statistics show that concussions had risen 32 percent between the 2014-2015 seasons, that is 271 concussions in the 2015 season compared to 206 in 2014. There was also an increase of ACL and MCL injuries between the 2014-2015 seasons, although the change was not as drastic. These statistics from ESPN show that there might be a better way to play the game but the leagues and programs insist that the players know the risks of what they are doing. As hundreds of thousands of sports concussions continue to happen every year, the issue has gathered people who say that the leagues/programs should do more and others who say that concussions and getting injured are just

In a study on concussed athletes the ones who continued to play had worse scores on both mental function tests performed eight days after the concussion and 30 days after the concussion. Medical records showed mental function had been similar in all players before their concussions (Tanner 2). In April of 2016, A study presented at an American Academy of Neurology meeting revealed that “more than 40 percent of retired National Football League players had signs of traumatic brain injury based on sensitive MRI scans called diffusion tensor imaging ("Concussions in Sports"). A study published in the journal Neurology tracked 3,439 retired players with at least 5 seasons in the NFL found that those players are four times as likely as other men their age to die of Alzheimer 's disease or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease) ("Concussions in Sports"). Return-to-play policies are widespread, especially in youth athletics, and they usually recommend sidelining players after a suspected concussion until symptoms resolve. One of the main reasons of sideling an athlete with a suspected concussion is to prevent a rare condition called second-impact syndrome, a potentially fatal brain swelling or bleeding that can occur when a player still recovering from a concussion gets hit again in the head (Tanner 2). Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is a degenerative disease in the brain, primarily found in athletes who have had repeated brain trauma. In September 2002, a former NFL center: Mike Webster, 50, died. Webster was a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and played for the Pittsburgh Steelers from 1974 to 1990. After his retirement from football he had suffered from amnesia, dementia, depression and a host of physical ailments. He becomes the first former NFL player to be diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) ("Concussions in Sports"). A