Concussion testing for student athletes is common, but some question its worth
News stories about brain-damaged former NFL football players and reports from Afghanistan and Iraq, where 200,000 U.S. service members have suffered head injuries over the past decade, have also raised concerns about concussions, which almost seem routine in some sports.
As research intensifies, scientists seem to be finding evidence of brain injury after apparently benign concussions. At Washington Hospital Center, researchers recently conducted MRI scans on 100 consecutive patients admitted for concussion, which is usually defined as a blow to the head that shakes the brain inside the skull and causes a variety of cognitive and other symptoms, such as difficulty thinking clearly, headaches, dizziness and mood changes. They found that roughly a third had evidence of damage to brain tissue, Lawrence Latour of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke reported last month at a military conference on traumatic brain injury.
