Personal Injury Law

Sports Related Concussions Warrant Longer Recovery Time

By Bruce Stern

An article I recently found in the Philadelphia Inquirer states that the suggested one-two week break from sports an athlete should take after suffering a concussion may not be long enough. Recent studies in the Archives of Neurology report that two weeks is not a sufficient enough amount of time for the brain to recover from such a traumatic event. When brain function was measured using several different techniques, athletes were found to have detectable impairment at least one month after sustaining a concussion.

Determining exactly when an athlete should return to their sport is not an exact science. Some of the measurement techniques used to gauge the level of injury are not readily available to local doctors, and some physicians may not have a valid baseline with which to compare an athlete's brain function. This is something we need to keep a close eye on, with more than 300,000 sports related concussions occurring each year in the United States alone. 

Full post as published by Traumatic Brain Injury Law Blog on October 01, 2008 (boomark / email).