ER Visits for Kids with Sports-related Concussions 'Skyrocketing'

The number of emergency room visits for kids with sports-related concussions and other forms of traumatic brain injuries (TBI) are skyrocketing, researchers have found.

The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, included nearly 4,000 children and teens who, between 2002 and 2011, visited Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center with sports-related TBI. In all, researchers tracked a 92 percent increase of cases during this nine-year period.

Meanwhile, the number of teens and younger children admitted to the hospital with the same diagnosis has seen a 10 percent increase, though cases during later years were less severe and required shorter hospital stays.

"More people are seeking care for TBI in the emergency department, and proportionately more are being admitted for observation," Dr. Holly Hanson, an emergency medicine fellow at Cincinnati Children's and lead author of the study, said in a statement.

Policy changes play an important role in the amount of people seeking help, Hanson added.

"Here in Cincinnati, we anticipate more children will be seeing their primary care physician or going to the Cincinnati Children's TBI clinic, due to the passage of recent Ohio legislation mandating medical clearance to return to play."

Fortunatley, the researchers found that injury severity decreased significantly from an average medical score of 7.8 to 4.8.

Skiing, sledding, inline skating and skateboarding were attributed with the highest admission rates among those visiting the emergency department.

The researchers cite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as calling TBI an "invisible epidemic" since the injuries, while profound, are not necessarily readily apparent. TBI causes some 630,000 emergency visits, 67,000 hospitalizations and 6,100 deaths in children and teens every year, the CDC reports.