Take head knocks seriously
THE head of Australia’s brain injury advocacy group has called for a serious but measured approach to the concussion debate.
Nick Rushworth, head of Brain Injury Australia, said it was impossible for athletes to protect themselves completely from concussion.
“The big-picture issue here is that we don’t want to be discouraging any and all kinds of physical activity with kids,” he told the Geelong Advertiser.
“What’s lost with many parents, who are quite rightly concerned about their child’s brain, is that concussion is a kind of occupational . . . hazard of the life of the physical.
“What’s really important is that once that concussion, particularly in organised sport, is identified is that the child is removed from play not to return to play until they are completely asymptomatic.
“Around 80 or 90 per cent of concussions make a full, uneventful recovery within 10-14 days.”
Concussion researcher Associate Professor Alan Pearce said concussion symptoms varied, but the telltale signs included disorientation, slurred speech, balance problems, immediate memory loss and nausea.
He said athletes were learning to recognise concussion injuries more effectively and treat them more seriously, but further changes in attitude were needed.
Research yet to be published has shown many university exercise science students displayed a different attitude to concussion depending on whether they were in the role of the athlete or the person treating the athlete.
Prof Pearce said many of the students indicated they would keep playing despite a concussion because they didn’t want to let down their teammates.
“There’s still a lot of disparity between what people are saying and what they will do in their actions,” he said.
“So we’ve still got a way to go to get this message through to the wider community that concussion is something that should be taken much more seriously.
“If someone gets a concussion they need to come off the field, they need to be assessed properly, and they need to have a period of rest and rehabilitation for that following week to 10 days.
“If it’s a kid at school they need to be taken seriously. They might need a couple of days off school rather than to try to stress the brain while doing school work.
“It’s really about the management of the injury rather than trying to stop anything from happening.”
Veteran AFL medico Hugh Seward said the management of concussion injuries had become more “cautious and more conservative” in recent years.
Dr Seward said the changing attitude would mean the threshold for what was considered concussion had changed, which was likely to lead to more reported cases.
“Whereas 10 years ago it would’ve been rare for a player to miss a week after a concussion, now it’s not uncommon,” he said.
“It’s not mandated at AFL that you have a week out from concussion. It’s (judged) on a case by case basis, but . . . particularly in the adolescent age group a very conservative approach with missing a game is often applied.”