NFL concussion diagnoses up in 2017
Concussion diagnoses rose 15 per cent overall in the 2017 season, the NFL said Friday.
Compared to 2016 — with numbers compiled and analyzed for the league by a medical-data company — brain injuries rose 28 per cent this past preseason (91 suffered in practices and games, up from 71 in 2016) and 10 per cent in the regular season (190 in practices and games, up from 172 in 2016).
Overall, concussions rose yearover-year from 243 to 281.
The league did not release figures from this month’s conference playoffs.
Nearly half of the 190 regularseason concussions reported — 47 per cent — had a self-report component, meaning either the concussed player alone reported symptoms or did so in conjunction with team-medical staff intervention, reporters were told on an afternoon conference call.
In 2016 that percentage was 32 per cent.
Some 28 per cent of 2017 regular-season concussions were diagnosed entirely because of player self-reported symptoms. The league and its medical-data provider say reliable numbers on selfreporting might go back only one year.
Increased self-reporting surely accounts in some large part for the spike in the 2017 concussion count. Although the league provided no evidence to support that claim, the inference seems sound and is consistent with anecdotal evidence NFL medical providers are seeing at practices and games.
The rise in self-reporting also speaks to the increased awareness and concern among the league’s 2,000 players about brain injuries and their potential long-term effects — all good things.
The league has been publicly releasing concussion data annually since 2012, and the number of concussions rises or falls almost by the year, seemingly randomly. These are the annual totals since 2012: 261, 229, 206, 275, 243 and 281.
The NFL also released 2017 data on significant knee injuries, and ACL tears dropped slightly, from 59 overall in 2016 to 56 — although the number rose year-over-year in the regular season, from 30 to 36.
Still, the number of ACL tears in each of the past three seasons (49, 59, 56) is lower than in either 2012 (62) or 2013 (61). The number of MCL tears had spiked in 2016 (from three years in the 130s to 170), but dropped to 143 in 2017.
These drops in knee injuries, perhaps, are an indication that rule changes intended to make the game safer are working, at least where the leg bones join. Or perhaps they’re just random. Too soon to know.