Unreported Concussions Sustained by Athletes

In this study, the athlete knowledge scores ranged from 20 to 34. Higher scores indicated more knowledge about concussions. The overall athlete attitude total scores toward concussion ranged from 40 to 98. A higher score indicated that the athlete had a better attitude towards reporting their concussion-like event.

A total of 182 athletes (53.3%) recalled having at least 1 possible concussion or concussion-like event. Of these 182, only 31 (16.9%) indicated that they had reported all of the experienced concussive events to a coach or a medical professional. The participants recalled 84 concussions, and in only 41 (48.8%) of these events, the athlete indicated that they had reported the event. In addition, the athletes recalled 584 concussion-like (bell ringer) events, and in only 72 of these (12.3%), the respondent indicated that they had reported the event to a medical professional or coach.

The researchers noted that the top reasons for not reporting a concussion or bell-ringer are as follows:

• The athlete did not think the event was serious enough to report (70.2%)

• The athlete did not want to be removed from a game (36.5%)

• The athlete did not want to let down their teammates (27.0%)

• The athlete did not want to let down their coaches (23.0%)

Other reasons for not reporting the events were, the athlete did not know the event was a concussion (14.9%) and the athlete didn’t want to be removed from practice (13.5%). In addition to these reasons, 37.7% of the athletes answered that they had continued to participate in a practice or a game at least once while experiencing signs and symptoms of a concussion.

Increased athlete knowledge was not associated with the prevalence of athletes indicating they continued to participate ...

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... school athletes did not report. In addition, the findings suggest that improving the culture of sport, increasing knowledge of concussion symptoms, and increasing the understanding of the serious nature of concussive injuries should be targets for future interventions. Furthermore, these findings support policies for educating both coaches and athletes, as well as the athletes’ parents.

Recommendations

In the future, researchers should investigate how external factors, such as coach, parent, and teammate pressures, influence reporting of concussion among high school athletes. They also should include additional high-risk sports, such as ice hockey, basketball, and wrestling. Another area to investigate is how long after the concussive event did the athlete wait to report the incident to a medical professional or coach, as this was not covered in the current study.