This week the National Football League has laid down sanctions, in the form of fines and suspension, against overly aggressive, ruthless, and dangerous tackling methods in an effort to reduce the amount of concussions and other severe brain injuries. This is great for the professionals, but Charleston accident lawyers know that these brain injuries are not limited to professional football; they can and do occur at the college and high school levels as well.
The National Center for Catastrophic Injury Research reports that between 1945-1999 there have been 491 fatalities were related to severe head injuries sustained during football. What is even more shocking to attorneys in Charleston is that in the last two high school football seasons there have been 8, concussion related fatalities across the Nation. While deaths, paralyzes, and other life altering brain injuries catch most of the media attention, but the larger issue is student athletes suffer post-concussion syndrome long after they’ve stepped off the playing field.
A research team at the University of South Carolina conducted a thorough study into the medical care provided by South Carolina high school athletic programs. The research found that schools with athletic training services were able to provide a substantially higher level of care to their athletes than those without. This study’s main implication is that it offers research-based support to long-held recommendation that high school athletic programs should maintain an athletic training service.
Because of this study, the Brain Injury Association of South Carolina has been awarded a grant to educate coaches on how to properly identify and manage a concussion in their players. Given the disparity of medical care in high school sports, the organization will focus its efforts on schools without athletic training services to improve the availability of proper medical care in South Carolina’s high school sports.