The management of concussion in sport is not standardized. A systematic review.

INTRODUCTION

Concussion is traumatic brain injury with associated tissue damage commonly produced by an indirect or direct head or facial trauma that can negatively impact an athletes' career and personal life. In this context, the importance on how to deal with a concussion has received attention from worldwide literature and has become a topic of enormous interest in the sports medicine arena.

OBJECTIVE

This systematic review aimed to investigate how sports-related concussion is being managed regarding athletic injuries, athletes' age, clinical signs of concussion, adopted questionnaires, as well as decision making in sports medicine.

METHODS

A systematic review of the literature was performed searching 10 electronic databases with no limitations for year of publication up to December 2019. The search terms used were: Brain Concussion, Athletes, Sports Medicine, Athletic Injuries, Clinical Decision-Making, and Decision Making. The articles were considered eligible when the studies related to populations of regular sports practitioners, professional or recreational, of any age; sports injury; articles reporting concussion evaluation in at least 30 athletes; and articles published in English, French, Portuguese, Italian. We excluded systematic review articles, reviews, editorials, sport-unrelated concussion, no questionnaire application, approaching retired athletes, consensus statement letters, author's reply to editorials, synopsis, and abstracts.

RESULTS

The parameters adopted for decision-making and management were broadly variable and were based on a variety of clinical signs or scoring outcomes from a myriad of questionnaires with little consistency in protocol or management guidelines, which could guide the average clinician.

CONCLUSION

This systematic review provides current evidence that post-concussion management in sports medicine has yet to accomplish a standardized protocol that clinicians could use to optimally care for athletes. The extensive number of manuscripts and studies addressing the topic confirms that sports-related concussion in the pediatric and adolescent population has come to the forefront in the sports medicine field.