Concussion and sports-related head injury

Interest in concussion and sports-related injury has intensified in recent years for three main reasons: (1) it is a preventable form of brain injury; (2) there is increasing evidence that repeated injury can result in long-term neurocognitive loss; and (3) as a result there are potential medicolegal costs to organizations that, possibly inadvertently, allow this form of brain injury to occur within their sport. The long-term effects of boxing resulting in dementia pugilistica have been appreciated for some time, however the results of repeated mild head injury in other sports is now under focus. Concussion, increasingly termed mild traumatic brain injury, should be graded. Imaging, removal from, and return to sport are all discussed in this chapter.