RETURN TO PLAY GUIDELINES AFTER A HEAD INJURY
Section snippets
Biomechanical Forces That Affect the Brain
An understanding of three principles is necessary to comprehend how biomechanical forces produce skull and brain injury. A forceful blow to the resting movable head usually produces maximal brain injury beneath the point of cranial impact (coup injury). This is the situation when the head in a resting state is forcibly struck by another object such as a left hook or an opponent's football helmet.2 A moving head colliding with a nonmoving object usually produces maximal brain injury opposite the
CONCLUSION
Today there are no universally accepted definitions of the grades of concussion or criteria for when to allow the athlete to return to competition after a concussion. In 1986, in The Physician and Sportsmedicine, I addressed this issue, and those recommendations are summarized in Table 2. I want to make it perfectly clear that these are guidelines for return to competition in contact sports after a concussion or more lethal brain injury based on both the world's literature and on my experience
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Cited by (139)
Return to Sports Following Sports-Related Concussion in Collision Sports: An Expert Consensus Statement Using the Modified Delphi Technique
2024, Arthroscopy - Journal of Arthroscopic and Related SurgeryConsiderations for Athlete Retirement After Sport-Related Concussion
2021, Clinics in Sports MedicineAcute management of concussion and diagnostic criteria
2019, Concussion: Assessment, Management and RehabilitationPediatric Concussion Management in the Emergency Department: A National Survey of Parents
2017, Journal of PediatricsCitation Excerpt :Similarly, many parents believed that after 3 concussions, a child should never play contact sports again. This is similar to a prior recommendation based on the Cantu guidelines from 1998, which was not carried over to the current Zurich concussion guidelines.6,8 In the Cantu guidelines, 2 grade 3 concussions should terminate a player's season and 3 grade 3 concussions should raise considerable deliberations as to whether the individual should be allowed to return to any contact or collision sport.6
The diagnostic credibility of second impact syndrome: A systematic literature review
2016, Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport
Address reprint requests to Robert C. Cantu, MD, FACS, FACSM, Service of Sports Medicine, Emerson Hospital, Concord, MA 01742
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Neurosurgery Service and the Service of Sports Medicine, Emerson Hospital, Concord, Massachusetts