CORR Insights®: Women Are at Higher Risk for Concussions Due to Ball or Equipment Contact in Soccer and Lacrosse.

Abstract

The general public’s awareness of concussive injuries in sports may be at an all-time high. Recent coverage in the lay media [8, 13] has emphasized the risks and long-term sequelae of sports-related concussion in athletes. It is well-known that contact sports, like American football, with its frequent collisions between players, are associated with the highest incidence of concussive injuries [4, 5, 9]. One study found that in a convenience sample of 202 deceased players of American football from a brain donation program, the neurodegenerative disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy was neuropathologically diagnosed in 177 players across all levels of play (87%), including 110 of 111 former National Football League players (99%) [10]. Although women athletes are less likely to incur a head injury caused by contact with another player than are men athletes, women athletes are more likely to incur a concussive injury from a playing surface or an apparatus than men [1]. In the current meta-analysis, Ling and colleagues [7] found that women athletes have a lower risk of playercontact-induced concussions in lacrosse, basketball, ice hockey, and soccer than do men, but are more likely to experience concussions because of ball or equipment contact in lacrosse and soccer compared to men playing those same sports. These results held true in spite of rules differences between the men’s and women’s lacrosse games. Injury is a part of sport, and participating athletes and the supporting public are willing to accept nominal risk. But the prospect of late dementia, accelerated by repetitive microtrauma to the brain, looms over all participants in contact sports, as well as the sports themselves.