In our Facebook Story of the Day for October 7, we're talking about kids and head injury.
(AP) -- Emergency room visits for teen athletes with concussions have significantly increased.
In a new federal study by The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC,) they found that athletic children going to the hospital with concussions is up 60 percent in the past decade.
Awareness of head injuries is one reason ER concussion reports are up.
Here are some symptoms of head injury or concussion in children (from Healthwise):
- Unsteadiness
- Blurred or double vision
- Changes in personality
- A decreased ability to talk or feed himself or herself
- Changes in how well your child is able to do physical activities, such as increased unsteadiness that makes it hard for him or her to walk or stand
- In a young child, increased fussiness or lack of energy
USA Today online spoke with Steven Marshall, interim director of the University of North Carolina's Injury Prevention and Research Center and he stated, "These injuries were always there. It's not that there are more injuries now. It's just that now people are getting treatment that they weren't getting before."
One noticeable fact was that the number of those admitted into the main hospital for further treatment had not increased.
(Copyright ©2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)