According to a new U.S. study, roughly 1.9 million children get concussions from recreational activities and various sports each year, and the problem is that a vast majority of them don’t get checked out by doctors after they get injured.

Anthony Kontos, head of the sports medicine concussion program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, explains that a lot of parents are not aware “that there are active and early interventions and therapies that can be used to treat kids following a concussion.”

Kontos, who wasn’t directly involved in the study, added that the misconception that all can be done to help a concussion heal is rest does a lot of harm.

“The fact that kids aren’t being seen by healthcare professionals trained in concussion following this injury is a problem, and we need to do a better job of educating parents, coaches and kids of the benefits of seeking appropriate and timely clinical care,” Kontos said in an email.

To estimate the number of recreation- and sport-related concussions, researchers reviewed three different nationwide databases. According to the paper published in the journal Pediatrics, it is difficult to get an exact count because not all injuries are reported and not every child is examined by a health professional.

However, the estimation is still somewhere around 1.1 million children (below 18) who get concussions from recreational activities and sports in the U.S. annually. The more worrying statistic says about 511,000 to 1.2 million kids do not see healthcare providers after they get injured.

Senior study author, Dr. Mersine Bryan of the Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute and the University of Washington, said the list of reasons why children are not seen by doctors after concussions is long.

Identifying and recognizing concussions have something to do with that, but not because parents think head injuries are too mild to seek medical care.

“If a child has a head injury and is experiencing symptoms afterward, such as headaches, nausea, dizziness, or fatigue, they should be evaluated by healthcare providers,” added Bryan by email.

The study was limited in accuracy because it did not take into consideration how many kids with symptoms actually did have concussions. Even so, the findings are similar to other research estimating the prevalence of concussions among children.
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