By Madeline Holcombe | CNN
Any time there is a head trauma, cardiac arrest, or other serious injury in professional sports, parents take a deep breath.
“This athlete is someone’s child. Could that be my child?”
Heart events during exercise are not uncommon for anyone, said Dr. Stuart Berger, department head of cardiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. While they can also occur in children and adolescents, these injuries can occur whether people play sports or not.
While many children can get injured on the field, the numbers are mostly declining — and exercise is important for their physical and mental health, doctors say. They explain how to prevent and treat sports injuries in children.
How many children get injured playing sports?
According to the latest figures from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, overall injuries from youth soccer participation have decreased dramatically since 2013, plateaued in 2020, and picked up again in 2021.
According to the commission, more than a million children aged 5 to 14 have been injured playing sports and had to be taken to the emergency room. In addition to sports like basketball, football, and soccer, the agency also reported significant injuries from things like playground equipment and skateboards.
Children aged 5-14 were the most injured in football in 2021: There were 110,171 reported injuries in children aged 5-14 in 2021, compared to 92,802 in adolescents and young adults aged 15-24.
Football and basketball were also high risk of injury for children, with 59,000 and 79,207 injuries, respectively.
The sports with the highest concussion rates were: boys’ soccer, with 10.4 concussions per 10,000 athlete exposures; girls’ soccer at 8.19 per 10,000 athlete contacts; and boys’ ice hockey at 7.69 per 10,000 athlete exposures, according to a 2019 study.
High-contact sports like hockey, soccer, lacrosse, and martial arts may have a higher risk of serious injuries like head injuries, but even seemingly safer sports like swimming and track and field have some risk of overuse injuries. And they can all be made safer with the right strategy, said Dr. Erin Grieb, pediatric sports medicine physician at Stanford Medicine Children’s Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Center.
Here’s what to do if your child plays sports.
What to look out for
When it comes to cardiac events, screening is critical, Berger said.
In general, children can safely play sports and exercise without worrying about cardiac events, but with all sports, it’s important to conduct a family history study to identify those who may be at risk, he added.
“The concern is that there might be someone with an underlying heart abnormality,” Berger said. “The screening is designed to establish that and we can, if possible, identify who these children are.”
Head injuries are another major concern for families when it comes to getting their kids involved in sports.
The majority of concussions in children are associated with youth sports, said Dr. Andrew Peterson, clinical professor of pediatrics and director of primary care sports medicine at the University of Iowa.
The good news is that there’s no clear evidence that a handful of childhood concussions are linked to long-term effects as an adult, he added.
But it’s really important to avoid re-injuring your head before a concussion is fully healed.
“The thing that we’re most worried about is these second impact events where people have concussion after concussion,” Peterson said.
Coaches, umpires and families should learn how to recognize a concussion to ensure their young athlete receives the proper care, Grieb said.
The signs and symptoms can be physical in nature, including headaches or sensitivity to light; mental, with confusion or difficulty paying attention; emotional, with sadness and fear; or sleep related, she added.
It’s important to remember that concussions can occur in many ways, and just because you have certain symptoms with one concussion doesn’t mean you’ll have the same symptoms with the next, Grieb said.
Prevention and Response
To keep children safe in sport, it is important to focus on both prevention and response.
Even in high-contact, high-risk sports, there has been a cultural shift to focus more rules and regulations on player protection and injury prevention, Grieb said.
Learning the right techniques and wearing well-fitting gear can help reduce the risk of serious injury in sports like soccer, hockey, and lacrosse.
In almost any sport, kids should be given ample time to rest throughout the week and throughout the year to avoid overuse injuries, she added.
When it comes to head injuries, it’s important that young athletes take the proper time and measures to recover before returning to their sport, Grieb said.
“If you break a bone, I can put you in a cast and not let you use your arm. If you have a head injury, I can’t put you in a cast,” she said. “You get a brain, so it’s really important that we let your brain heal.”
In response to a cardiac event, every person — player, coach, or spectator — should be familiar with CPR, or cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and the use of a defibrillator, Berger said.
“Be ready to intervene because it saves lives,” he added.
Why children should still play
The takeaway message shouldn’t be to discourage your kids from exercise, Berger said.
There could be a conversation with your child about what sports they want to play, along with the risks and precautions your family will be taking, Grieb said, but it doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
Sports and other physical activities are important for kids to build good habits to keep moving throughout their lives, Peterson said. And regular exercise is part of growing up safe and healthy, he added.
But sports also give our kids leadership, life lessons and fun, Grieb said.
“If you focus on using the right techniques, focus on following the rules of the game and you have coaches and referees who also deal with that, then I think that particularly risky sports can be safer than in the past, ” She said.
The CNN Wire
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