A select few of our prior blog posts have addressed the important realm of child injuries. We have highlighted, for example, the risks posed to children from home cleaning products and from sledding mishaps.

Now we turn to a discussion of what seems to be in the news with ever-increasing frequency these days, namely, child concussions. A report published just this past Monday in the medical journal Pediatrics states that emergency room visits by kids suffering concussions while playing sports has more than doubled in recent years. The study, conducted by Brown University Medical School, reports that about 40 percent of those visits are from children aged 8 to 13.

The numbers are sufficiently alarming to have immediately prompted an updated report by the American Academy of Pediatrics ("AAP") on concussion identification and treatment for children. The AAP states that kids' brains are more easily injured than those of adults and that a child's concussion is comparatively more damaging and less susceptible of quick healing. In every concussion diagnosis, the AAP recommends rest and no sports participation as long as any symptoms remain.

There are critics of the newly released statistics. Moira Davenport is one of them. Davenport, a board-certified sports medicine doctor, says there is good reason to not be overly alarmed by the reported rise in child concussions and sports-related emergency room visits. "The number of visits is increasing," she says, "but part of that is because of greater awareness." She also notes that the definition of a concussion is more liberal now than in times past, having expanded from a required loss of consciousness to "any time you sustain a direct blow to the head."

Related Resource: www.post-gazette.com "More youngsters suffer concussions from sports" August 31, 2010