Every time a head injury, cardiac arrest or other serious injury occurs in professional sports, parents take a deep breath.
“This athlete is someone’s child. Could this be my baby?
Cardiac events during sports are rare in anyone, said Dr. Stuart Berger, head of the department of cardiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. While they can also occur in children and teens, these injuries can occur regardless of whether people play sports or not.
While many children can get injured on the pitch, that number is mostly declining – and sport is important for their physical and mental health, doctors say. They explain how to prevent and treat sports injuries in children.
According to the latest data from the U.S. Commission on
According to the commission, more than a million children between the ages of 5 and 14 were injured while playing sports and required a trip to the emergency room. In addition to sports like basketball, soccer and soccer, the agency has also reported serious injuries caused by things like playground equipment and skateboards.
Children aged 5 to 14 were the most likely to be injured in football in 2021: 110,171 injuries were reported in children aged 5 to 14 in 2021, compared with 92,802 among adolescents and young adults aged 15 to 24 years old.
Football and basketball also posed a high risk of injury to children, with 59,000 and 79,207 injuries respectively.
The sports with the highest rate of concussion were: boys’ soccer, with 10.4 concussions per 10,000 athlete exposures; girls’ soccer, with 8.19 exposures per 10,000 athletes; and boys’ ice hockey, with 7.69 exposures per 10,000 athletes, according to a 2019 study.
Contact sports such as hockey, soccer, lacrosse, and martial arts may carry a greater risk of serious injuries such as head trauma, but even seemingly safer sports such as swimming and treadmill pose some risk of overuse injuries. And they can all be made safer with the right strategy, said Dr. Erin Grieb, MD, primary care sports medicine physician at Stanford Medicine Children’s Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Center.
Here’s what to do if your child plays sports.
Berger said when it comes to cardiac events, screening is crucial.
In general, children can safely play sports and exercise without worrying about cardiac events, but for all types of sports it is important to have a physical examination with a family history to identify those who may be at risk, he added.
“They’re concerned that maybe someone has a hidden heart defect,” Berger said. “The project is to bring that out and so that we can identify, if possible, who these children are.”
Head injuries are another major concern for families when it comes to placing children in sports.
Most childhood concussions are related to youth sports, said Dr. Andrew Peterson, clinical professor of pediatrics and director of primary care sports medicine at the University of Iowa.
He added that the good news is that there is no strong evidence that a few concussions in childhood are associated with long-term effects in adulthood.
But it’s really important to avoid re-injuring your head before your concussion has completely healed.
“What we’re most worried about are those second-strike events where people have concussions,” Peterson said.
Coaches, referees and families should learn to recognize concussions to ensure their young player is properly cared for, Grieb said.
Signs and symptoms can be physical, including headaches or photosensitivity; mental, with confusion or difficulty paying attention; emotional, with sadness and anxiety; or related to sleep, she added.
It’s important to remember that a concussion can manifest itself in many ways, and just because you have certain symptoms in one concussion doesn’t mean you’ll have the same symptoms in the next, Grieb said.
To keep children safe in sport, it is important to focus on both prevention and response.
Grieb said that even in contact and high-risk sports, there has been a cultural shift to focus more on rules and regulations for player protection and injury prevention.
Learning the right techniques and wearing well-fitting equipment can help reduce the risk of serious injury in sports such as soccer, hockey, and lacrosse.
She added that in almost every sport, children should be allowed enough rest time during the week and throughout the year to avoid injury.
With head injuries, it’s important that young athletes take adequate time and effort to recover before returning to sports, Grieb said.
“If you break a bone, I can put you in a cast and not let you use that arm. When you have a head injury, I can’t put your head in a cast,” she said. “You get one brain, so it’s really important that we let it heal.”
Berger said that in response to a cardiac event, any person – player, coach or observer – should be familiar with cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and how to use a defibrillator.
“Be prepared to intervene because that’s what saves lives,” he added.
The takeaway message shouldn’t be to keep kids out of sports, Berger said.
Grieb said there could be a conversation with your child about what sports he wants to play and the risks and precautions your family will take, but it doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
Sports and other physical activities for children are important for building good habits to keep moving throughout life, Peterson said. He added that regular movement is part of growing up in a safe and healthy way.
But sport also gives our children leadership skills, life lessons and fun, Grieb said.
“If you focus on using the right techniques, following the rules of the game, and you have coaches and referees who are also committed to that, then I think especially risky sports can be safer than in the past. ,” she said.
