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Female gender does not affect acute concussive soccer injuries, study finds
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A soccer player’s gender makes no difference in the concussion incidence or the neurocognitive scores before and after such injuries, according to recent research in the Journal of Neurosurgery: Pediatrics.
“The number of females playing sports has exponentially increased in recent decades, as has the controversy regarding concussion management in males vs. females,” first author of the study Scott L. Zuckerman, MD, stated in a press release.
Zuckerman and colleagues analyzed 40 men and 40 women soccer players. They looked for more symptoms reported at baseline or more concussions reported by the women players, whether women had better baseline verbal memory scores, whether the men had better visual memory at baseline, and whether the women had more neurocognitive impairment after concussion, according to the release.
While women showed a higher number of symptoms post-concussion, researchers were unable to find evidence of the other three assumptions, according to Zuckerman.
“Our hypothesis was that females would experience greater levels of acute, post-concussive neurocognitive impairment than males, fitting with what most of the prior literature says, but we found virtually no difference between males and females,” he stated in the release.
Reference:
Zuckerman SL, Solomon GS, Forbes JA, et al. Response to acute concussive injury in soccer players: is gender a modifying factor? Clinical article. J Neurosurg: Pediatrics. 2012. Published online ahead of print Oct 2, 2012. doi:10.3171/2012.8.PEDS12139.
Disclosure: Zuckerman has no relevant financial disclosures.
