Second impact syndrome (SIS) in Texas sports occurs where a person suffers a second traumatic brain injury like a concussion before the first head injury has healed. The second injury might occur any time during the days and weeks of healing that follow the first injury. Our Houston head injury lawyers caution that even if the second head impact is mild, it could lead to herniation and cerebral edema (bleeding) that could cause collapse and death in a matter of minutes.
Medical literature has chronicled 17 cases of confirmed SIS. Other suspected, but unconfirmed cases have also been chronicled, but the phenomenon of SIS has not received extensive study as yet. The danger of SIS in Texas sports does warrant additional focused study. The U.S. CDC estimates that about 300,000 concussions occur annually in high school and college sports.
Even where additional head impact injuries occur after the symptoms of an initial concussion have disappeared, the risks of multiple concussions over a period of time are severe. Repetitive head injuries can lead to significant neurological and functional deficits in the victim.
Professional boxers, for instance, that receive multiple, deliberate blows to the head in the course of their profession show evidence of chronic encephalopathy, also called dementia pugilistica (“boxer’s dementia”). And autopsies of some professional football players that shared a history of repeated concussions over time showed brain changes that reflected chronic encephalopathy. And retired professional football players with 3 or more concussions during their careers showed a three-fold increase in the incidence of depression.
College players with multiple concussions demonstrate prolonged recovery periods, reduced cognitive performance, and an increased likelihood of additional concussions to add to their woes.
Our Houston head injury lawyers note that professional sports figures are increasingly donating their brains to science to be studied after death. But this trend has only recently emerged; so hard data on the brain changes and impairments caused by repeated traumatic brain injury in Texas sports remains relatively rare.
There remains much more to be learned about the cumulative effects of subsequent head impact injuries. But the data gleaned to date is already sobering. Multiple traumatic brain injuries over time can have detrimental effects on overall health, emotional stability, motor function, and cognitive function. The data strongly indicates that Texas sports programs to prevent traumatic brain injuries in athletes and to remove injured players from the field after a concussion are critical.
Learn more about what you could do to prevent or treat a sports-related concussion in this article by our Houston head injury lawyers.