UPFRONT | Roundup SPORTS INJURY Take 5 Concussion among youth, children rising in Ontario A study has found that the number of children and youth treated for concus-sions in both emergency departments and doctors’ offices in Ontario has risen significantly. Between 2003 and 2011, almost 89,000 pediatric concussions were treated in either an emer-gency department or a physician’s office. The rate of concussions jumped to 754 from 466 per 100,000 for boys, and to 440 from 208 per 100,000 for girls. Researchers at Toronto’s York University and the Institute for Clinical Eval-uative Sciences, or ICES, found that falls and hockey and skating injuries were the leading causes of con-cussion in kids aged three to 18. The study published recently in the journal Pae-diatrics and Child Health also showed that, over time, more children were being evaluated for concussion in doctors’ offices than in the ER. Study co-author Dr. Astrid Guttmann of ICES said prevention initiatives to help reduce the incidence of concussion are warranted, particularly in sports and recreation programs. Guttmann says sports-related concussions can be minimized by such preventive actions as re-ducing body checking in hockey or wearing a helmet while cycling. “By examining all of the pediatric concussions eval-uated in multiple facilities, we were able to minimize the issue of under-reporting and obtain a more accurate number of concussions treated in Ontario,” added lead author Alison Macpherson, a professor at York’s School of Kinesiol-ogy and Health Science. She said future studies could try to differentiate between the true incidence of concussion and an in-crease in those seeking medical evaluation due to increased awareness of the brain injury and its possible health consequences. -The Canadian Press For more stories on concussions visit canadianchiropractor.ca NUMBER CRUNCHING Health watch Consumers are no longer seeking to simply address health and wellness issues once they arise, instead, they are increasingly looking at adapting a health and wellness lifestyle in order to prevent diseases and achieve a better quality of life. Canadian shoppers who prefer to purchase a healthier version of a product 58% slice of Canadians experiencing high degree of life stress 1/4 1.6 million Canadian children considered obese or overweight www.canadianchiropractor.ca Cost of physical inactivity in Canada 8 Canadian Chiropractor February 2015 Illustration: Brian Fray $6.8 billion
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