The epidemiology of sports-related concussions (SRCs) and closed head injuries (CHIs) in high school females remains largely undefined at the national level, especially for unorganized sports and recreational activities such as equestrian and snow-related sports. A new study presented at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) took a closer look at sports-related head injuries in female patients over a 20-year period to identify national estimates, demographic characteristics, and trends. The findings show a dramatic increase — more than 200% — in sports-related head injuries among female athletes ages 14-18 and demonstrates that this increase is not always directly correlated to increased participation.
According to studies investigating sex differences in SRC epidemiology, female athletes face concussion rates nearly twice as high as their male counterparts when participating in sex-comparable sports. Female athletes may also be more likely to sustain recurrent concussions, experience atypical symptoms, and require longer recovery times before returning to sport.
“In addition to concussions, we made sure to include closed head injuries as part of our analysis because, in both cases, we wouldn’t want athletes to return to play without an evaluation,” said lead researcher Kevin Pirruccio, MD, orthopaedic surgery resident at Yale New Haven Hospital. “CHI is the most common type of traumatic brain injury; it is a blunt, non-penetrating head trauma that doesn’t create a break in the skull. While there is a lot of overlap between SRCs and CHIs, concussion refers to the symptoms (dizziness, nausea, blurry vision, etc.) and CHI is the mechanism of the injury.”
