An AFL helmet might do more harm than good
You might think you are helping to protect your child from concussion by having them wear a helmet on the footy ground — but a top AFL doctor says you could be doing more harm.
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Having your child wear a footy helmet on field could do more harm than good, warns a top AFL doctor.
Port Adelaide’s senior doctor Mark Fisher says there is no evidence that protective head gear reduces the risk of concussion.
Instead, he says, it can provide a false sense of security meaning a young player will go into a contest harder than he might without the helmet on.
“The standard recommendation pretty much across all sports is that helmets, or head guards, are not recommended because there is no evidence to show they help,” he said.
“There are sports, those you might call the high velocity sports such as equestrian, cycling and motorsport, where a helmet is compulsory but these are sports where you are at risk of falling off and hitting your head on a concrete surface — the bitumen or road — and warrant wearing a helmet to protect the head from skull fractures.”
The 35-year sports medicine veteran says AFL players who opt to wear a helmet do so because they choose to, not on medical advice.
“Brad Ebert at Port Adelaide wore a head guard this year (after coming back from concussion) — it was his wish to wear one,” he said.
“We said ‘that is fine, you can wear one but you need to know it won’t necessarily protect you from further injury’. For him it is really was peace of mind and that is fine.”
Worryingly, Dr Fisher warns it takes a child twice as long to recover from concussion than an adult.
“Generally speaking, 80 to 90 per cent of adult athletes who sustain a concussion will recover fully within nine or 10 days, in children we tend to double that so it is 14 ro 20 days, or two to three weeks for a child compared to two weeks for an adult,” he said.
“The evidence shows if a child returns to sport prematurely before they have recovered from concussion, they are more likely to get other injuries because they don’t have their sharp reflexes about them, their skills are not as good until they are fully recovered, so they are more prone to injury.
“The second thing is after one concussion, if they get a subsequent knock, it tends to be of more significance and more severe, so even a longer period out from sport.
“We’ve seen 15 and 16 year olds who have had two or three concussion episodes in one season — they are the ones that are of concern — and we’ll sometimes say to these individuals, ‘you cannot play for the rest of the season, with or without a helmet’.”
Dr Fisher, who is also the Australian Cycling Team’s senior doctor, says there is growing awareness around the risks of concussion.
“(One of the issues with concussion is) it varies between individuals and within individuals and can evolve over a period of a few hours and even a day … it may not be until the next day that someone who gets a knock to the head starts to feel unwell, or developing a headache, nausea or dizziness,” he said.
Dr Fisher says if a player is knocked unconscious they should always be sent for a medical assessment, so too if they show sign or symptoms suggestive of concussion such as loss of memory, confusion, disorientation, dizziness and bad headaches.
“Most people with concussion will complain of a combination of those things, they will say things like, ‘I don’t feel right’, ‘I don’t remember what happened’,” he said.
Dr Fisher says it is rare for children to suffer concussion while playing sport.
“Most children don’t suffer serious head injury in junior sport … what is of more concern is, if they fall off play equipment onto their heads, or off their bikes, that sort of thing,” he said.