Many children play sport after concussion Young players at AJAX Junior Football Club must wear helmets and mouthguards. Hundreds of children have been treated for sports-related head injuries at the Royal Children's Hospital in the past six months and many are returning to the field after a concussion, contrary to guidelines. About 300 children arrived at the hospital's emergency department with sports-related head injuries between May and November. They included 90 children who took part in a Murdoch Childrens Research Institute study on concussion, to be presented at the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine's annual scientific meeting in Adelaide on Tuesday. Most of the children aged between five and 18 years reported one or more of the main symptoms of concussion, including loss of consciousness (38 per cent), disorientation (34 per cent), vomiting (20 per cent), amnesia (29 per cent) and headache (49 per cent). They sustained the injuries playing a range of sports including Australian football (52 per cent), soccer (12 per cent), rugby (7 per cent), and basketball (7 per cent). Researcher Harini Haran, a final-year medical student at Monash University, said the study showed many children who played organised sports were not being managed in accordance with guidelines on concussion in sport. She said 27 per cent of the children had not been immediately assessed by qualified personnel, and 28 per cent were allowed to return to play on the day of their injury. Ms Haran said it was important that children returned slowly from rest after concussion, to mild exercise and then full contact game play in the course of at least a week. "The reason the return-to-play guidelines are so important is if the child returns to sport too early their reaction times and ability to participate won't be as good and they are at risk of getting a second injury," she said. Study supervisor and paediatric emergency physician Franz Babl said most children recovered from concussion after a few days of rest but children, parents and coaches needed to be aware of the symptoms, including memory problems, feeling foggy or irritable or slow reaction times. He said children with such symptoms need to come off the field immediately and not return to play, and should be assessed by a medical professional. Ms Haran said junior sporting organisations often included good information about concussion on their websites but the study indicated more was needed in some cases to ensure guidelines were implemented on the field. "Our recommendation is for sports organisations to have a pre-season handout for children and parents on concussion and return to play, and also have handouts available at the time of injury," she said. President of the AJAX Junior Football Club in Melbourne's south east Dan Antman said the club took an ultra-conservative view when it came to head injury and had a mandatory helmet policy for its under-nine and under-10 teams. Mr Antman said while they couldn't enforce the use of helmets past the age of 10, many children continued to wear them. General manager of the Keilor Downs-based Green Gully Soccer Club Raymond Mamo said the club required a doctor's clearance for children to return to normal training after head injury, and urged parents to follow medical advice. With Vanessa Desloires