Study: 12 Football Players Die Each Year In Practices, Games

April 16, 2013 / FootballSports Medicine
The Morning Call

http://articles.mcall.com/2013-04-06/news/mc-reuters-football-deahts-20130406_1_heat-related-deaths-college-football-catastrophic-sports-injury-research

Each year in the U.S. an average of a dozen high school and college football players die during practices and games, according to a new study that finds heart conditions, heat and other non-traumatic causes of death are twice as common as injury-related ones.

Researchers reviewed data from the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research and found 243 football deaths recorded between July 1990 and June 2010.

Of the fatalities, 100 resulted from an underlying heart condition, 62 were due to a brain injury, and 38 were from heat-related causes, according to findings published in The American Journal of Sports Medicine.

Kelly Dougherty, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, said she found the number of heat-related deaths in particular “quite alarming.”

Many of those deaths happened in the South during preseason play, including at two-a-day practices.

“These are preventable deaths,” said Dougherty, who has studied heat acclimation but wasn’t involved in the new study.

“We have so few data to guide policy, to guide recommendations, and we really don’t have a good idea of body temperature responses in the field.”

Current recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics call for making sure kids and teens gradually adapt to exercising in the heat during the preseason and for teams to take more water breaks, and play with less intensity, on very hot and humid days.


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