This Common Head Movement After A Hit May Indicate A Serious Concussion
Common Head Movement: Dr. Daniel Daneshvar says, “We have a precise definition for this sign: the head shakes rapidly after a hit.”
According to a new study based on young athletes’ experiences, rapid head shaking after receiving a strong hit may be a sign of concussion.
Common Head Movement, Researchers from Mass General Brigham and the Concussion Legacy Foundation found that this rapid head movement is easy to identify and, if added to official guidelines for diagnosing concussions, could significantly reduce the number of undiagnosed concussions.
Dr. Daniel Daneshvar, one of the study authors and head of the Sports Brain Injury Division at Mass General Brigham, explains: “We have a precise definition for this movement: the head shakes rapidly (at 2 to 8 Hz) after a blow to the head.”
This Common Head Movement After A Hit
You may have seen cartoons where a character hit on the head has birds circling around them. Daneshvar says this visual stems from a common understanding of head injuries but, unfortunately, it has no place in medical guidelines or research articles.
Common Head Movement, To understand this movement, referred to as a “spontaneous headshake after a kinematic event,” and its link to concussions, researchers studied hundreds of young individuals who participated in sports at the school or collegiate semi-professional level.
Kinematic events encompass a variety of incidents that may happen during sports or daily activities, such as head hits, sudden rotations, falls, impacts from other players, or swift, abrupt movements.
Common Head Movement, They found that many of these young people were familiar with this movement and had experienced it more than once. Nearly three-quarters of those studied reported experiencing a concussion during moments when they felt this head shake.
According to CNN, the concussions reported by participants were mostly self-diagnosed, but the main causes for the headshake, such as feeling unbalanced, dizzy, or disoriented, aligned with known symptoms associated with concussions.
Dr. Julie Stamm, a clinical assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, believes the connection between head shakes and concussions has been long overlooked. “Until a few decades ago, we thought the primary sign of a concussion was unconsciousness, but scientific advances have shown that concussions rarely lead to severe symptoms like that. Instead, subtler signs have been recognized as more common, and the severity of symptoms doesn’t always match the injury’s intensity.”
Stamm adds that people often tried to “shake off” dizziness or “seeing stars” by shaking their heads as a form of self-recovery.
Common Head Movement, Daneshvar, who is also head of the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Department, states that head shaking is a reliable sign indicating a potential concussion. Other behaviors, such as a player holding their head, slowly standing up, or losing balance after a hit, should also be treated as serious signs of a concussion. Players displaying any of these should be immediately removed from the field and given a thorough brain injury examination.
Common Head Movement, He emphasizes that the cost of removing a player from the field for examination is negligible compared to the potential negative consequences of failing to evaluate a player with a possible concussion, which can be catastrophic.
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