from JAMA Pediatrics
Many of the current figures on concussion injury to children come from hospital emergency rooms or from high school or college athletics data. Those numbers may be way off. Researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention note that eighty-two percent of children under seventeen had their first care for a possible concussion from a primary care office. Another rather surprising statistic from the study is that one-third of children whose concussion was diagnosed in a primary care setting were under age twelve. Researchers say that represents an important part of the concussion population that is missed by existing surveillance and reporting systems that focus on high school athletes. The study appears in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.