As people begin to take more notice of head injuries in sports, another study has come out showing some worrisome figures regarding children and sports.
The research was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation. The study gathered data from 12,799 kids aged five to 19 who went to emergency departments across the country over nearly 20 years. It looked at brain injuries and categorized them by players’ ages, sports and how the injury was sustained — being struck by a player, an object such as net or ball, or playing surface.
They found that hockey accounted for 44% of all injuries, either from player to player contact or being hit into the boards.
Dr. Michael Cusimano, principal researcher, is a neurosurgeon at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. He said there’s been a rule in hockey against hitting from behind for 20 years, yet its still causing most of the injuries. He would like to see greater enforcement of the rules.
Next on the list came soccer, the most popular sport for young people in Canada, reporting 19% of brain injuries. Teens tended to get hurt by high kicks to the head or head on head injuries, Younger players age 5 to 9, tended to get brain injury from striking the post or the surface.
Baseball was next at just over 15%, mostly in children 14 and under who were struck either by the ball or the bat, often from standing too close to the batter.
North American style football reported nearly 13% of injuries, while rugby reported 5,6%, in both cases the head injury usually resulted from tackles.
Surprisingly perhaps, basketball head injury statistics were close to football at over 11%, mostly due to elbowing as older teens got more competitive.
Dr. Cusimano says of player contact causing injury. “Kids are getting more competitive and therefore more aggressive as they get into the higher age groups.
“As well, their weight and speed is increasing. These are prime physical factors that are going to predict brain injuries as well — the speed of the collision and the momentum that somebody hits another player with.”
Another researcher of childhood injuries at York University in Toronto, but who was not involved in the study, says, the message is that parents should not prevent children playing sports, but to try to ensure that they play them more safely.
Some 80% of those injured were boys, and the average age was 13.
(mm with files from CBC, Hamilton Spectator)
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