Rattling Your Brain

Picture By: Liz Henry

I remember when I was 13 years old and I joined this new soccer team. Everything was great until I found out that every girl had to wear headgear during every game and practice. This headgear was so ugly and uncomfortable to wear, it drove me so crazy that I would pretend that I left it at home so I wouldn’t have to wear it. They required us to wear it to prevent us from concussions. At that time, I would have rather experienced a concussion than be seen wearing this hideous headgear that felt like a helmet. But at that age, I never fully understood how serious a concussion was. A blow to the head causing your brain to move rapidly inside your skull doesn’t sound like something that should be taken lightly. But should girls like me have to wear headgear to protect us? The Journal of Athletic Training searches to discover differences of symptoms between high school male and female athletes.
The objective of this study was to find differences in symptoms between male and female concussed high school athletes. The female athlete population has grown tremendously throughout the years, thus causing scientists and doctors wanting to study differences in male and female injuries and their symptoms. They wanted to compare symptoms, length of the symptoms, and time it took to rejoin their sport after experiencing a concussion.
To test this, they collected data from both 2005-2006 and 2006-2007. They had a year 1 and a year 2 to look at. The injury and exposure data was collected from High-School Sports Related Injury Surveillance System, RIO. RIO is an online data base that tracks and records injuries in high school students. Male sports that were studied were football, basketball, baseball, soccer and wrestling. Female sports were soccer, volleyball, softball, and basketball. In year 1 they had 425 Athletic Trainers involved, in year 2 they had 316. Each year, the Athletic Trainers were to log on to RIO and record injury and athlete-exposure data. The differences between these terms are that Athlete-exposure was defined as one athlete participating in one sport. Where as an injury was described into three parts, it had to have occurred during a high-school practice or competition, it required the assistance of an Athletic Trainer or physician, and it required restriction of play for at least one day. In year 1 they were only asked to record primary symptoms, but in year 2 they changed it, and asked to record every single symptom. Due to the purpose of the study, only concussion occurrences were collected. They took into account weight, height, what time it occurred, practice or game, new or old injuries, and safety equipment worn.
In year one, 391 concussions were recorded, 283 males and 108 females. In year two there were 421 concussions, 327 males and 94 females. During year 1, symptoms were primarily headaches. When they looked at symptoms in regards to sex, males reported more amnesia and confusion than did females. During year 2 headaches were again, the most common symptom. Males recorded more amnesia and confusion than females, however females recorded more drowsiness and sensitivity to noise than males. In regards to symptom resolution, they found that it took 3 or more days for both females and males to recover. But they could not distinguish a difference between them. Out of all the athletes, 64% could return to play after 9 days. However, for females it averaged 3-6 days after concussion to return. Males took an average of 7-9 days. These results were not significant enough to discern any differences between males and females.
In conclusion, they found that differences in symptoms are not very pronounced. In regards to symptom resolution and recovery time, both males and females had similar results. The largest difference was shown in different types of symptoms after the injury. Males had more cognitive symptoms and females recorded more neurobehavioral and somatic symptoms. Concussions are one of the most difficult injuries to assess due to the fact that no biological sign can signal a physician or Athletic Trainer that you have one. Doctors and Athletic Trainers have to go off of symptoms and information that is given to them from the athlete. This is why it is so important that symptoms and results are studied because concussions are a serious issue and cannot be overlooked.

Susan A. Saliba, et al. "Sex Differences in Concussion Symptoms of High School Athletes." Journal of Athletic Training 46.1 (2011): 76-84. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 26 Sept. 2011.