CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – While the majority of the discussion around sports related acute concussions centers around the most high impact sports such as football and combat sports, but scientific data shows that women’s soccer has the second highest rate of concussions behind football. Athletes who do not wear protective headgear are highly susceptible to acute head trauma that can cause a concussion. Typically the symptoms include confusion, headaches, light sensitivity and behavioral changes. Athletes at all levels typically have a “warrior” mentality where they are reluctant to admit their symptoms during competition so they can return to the field of play. Dr. Jose Posas, a neurologist at the UVA Health System says that’s why it is critically important to have precise methods to identify the symptoms of concussions.
“Now we know in terms of things we look for, when I examine people I look at their pupils and make sure there isn’t symmetry between one pupil and the other, I make sure their eyes can track my finger when administering the eye exam, I check them for balance and make sure they’re not falling [all] over the place.” said Posas. “It almost looks like I’m doing a field sobriety test on them when I make them stand in various positions and the other thing I’ll check for is I’ll check their memory and ask them specific questions like who are we playing, who did you play last week, the score, did y’all win, just orientation questions to make sure they know where they are and what they’re doing.”
The conventional medical opinion around athletes that suffer multiple acute sports concussions, is that its time to have the conversation, regardless of your age, about retiring from that particular sport, and that includes high school athletes. However, Dr. Posas says that is not always the case and that their can be mitigation strategies to help athletes remain active to benefit from all that sports have to offer regardless of successive acute concussions.
“There are some locations around the country or some institutions around the country that say look if you’ve had more than three [concussions] you can’t play sports but what I counsel my seniors and my juniors who are interested in trying to pursue collegiate sports for example is just to let them know, hey you’ve had three concussions, I’m willing to work with you and get objective data” continued Posas. “I’m willing to try and make sure you’re playing safely and not harming yourself and I’m willing to take a look at the overall pattern of what’s going on lets make sure you’re doing well academically and behaviorally but I do warn them there are some places that are going by the playbook that says if you have X number [of concussions] you shouldn’t be playing that sport, which I think unfortunately more often than not, what schools I can’t really say because every school is different but what I tell folks at UVA and the high schools in the areas we cover is lets treat every injury as an individual injury and make sure you recover well from that and then play safely afterwards.”
Dr. Posas also believes that athletes can be redirected to other sports that don’t have the same risks of head trauma in order to allow them to continue to benefit from the discipline and self-esteem that come from athletics. He also believes that a multidisciplinary approach is important, and that mental health professionals are needed in the event that an athlete is forced to stop competing in their sport of choice because of the affects of multiple concussions to avoid depression and related challenges. You can hear the full interview with Dr. Posas below.
