The Institute of Medicine released a new study this week, saying that high school football players have almost twice the risk of sustaining a concussion compared to college football players and to high school students who play other sports. Even the sidelines are not safe, as young cheerleaders also face an increasing risk of concussion. Girl soccer players also face concussions as an ever-growing threat. This increasing risk appears to be across the board when it comes to sports. Many of these concussions are serious, with the report stating that nearly 20 percent of these young athletes have concussions they can feel for more than two weeks.

As significant a health problem as concussions are, one of the more serious problems related to a concussion is that it does not necessarily evidence itself visibly, and athletes are often encouraged to suck it up and play on, or coaches may force athletes to return to the playing field much too early. If players return too soon after a concussion, the damage inflicted can greatly worsen.

In 2009, there were roughly 250,000 people younger than 19 years old who were taken to the emergency room with a concussion, which is significantly more than the 150,000 who were treated in the emergency room in 2001 for a concussion. A committee chairman at the Institute of Medicine said it was inconclusive, however, if this reflects a greater danger in sports today, or whether this reflects people becoming more able to detect this injury and realize its dangers. Researchers with the Institute of Medicine believe that many instances of concussion injury do not even get reported. This only heightens the damage of a concussion, as a delayed diagnosis and medical care puts younger athletes in danger of sustaining another concussion and feeling long-term effects from the injury.

According to research conducted at the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, 7-year-old football players were sustaining blows to the head that were nearly as forceful as a head hit in high school or even an adult football league. Most of this type of impact occurred at practice. As if that were not bad news enough, this latest research discovered that football helmets are inadequate in providing the protection necessary; they do not shield athletes from sustaining concussions.

For male athletes, the sports that pose the highest risk of concussion include: football, ice hockey, lacrosse, soccer, and wrestling. Any young athlete who has had a concussion before has that much greater a chance of sustaining another concussion while playing sports.

The research discovered that girl athletes have a higher risk of getting a concussion than do boy athletes who play the same sport, such as soccer and basketball. As for cheerleading, the concussion rate is not as bad as in other sports, but this rate spiked up 26 percent every single year from 1998 to 2008, a more rapid rise than for any other sport played by high school and college female athletes.

Again, some higher rates could simply mean that this head trauma is being diagnosed more, but according to a neurosurgery associate professor from UCLA, the difference could lie "in the competitiveness in children and their sports….In the female population we do see that the way girls play sports has changed in the last 10 years—they're more aggressive."

While concussions might be a risk that athletes assume when they take up a sport, coaches can be negligent in their duty to protect the players, or medical personnel may be unreasonably incompetent and miss the diagnosis or provide negligent treatment. If you think you might have a case from a concussion or related injuries in sports, do not hesitate to contact a personal injury lawyer today!