As The Concussion Blog continues to gain recognition it seems that some of the information is being used around the world.  This can be noted in our analytics and seeing plenty of blog views from around the globe.  Not surprisingly the US has the most traffic, followed by Canada and Mexico.  The next most is the United Kingdom and Australia; presumably for our coverage of soccer and Aussie Rules.  Because of this we get vast amounts of email from around the globe, and Australia has been providing tons of information to help with the blog and insight of how things are handled in their part of the world.

Most recently I was sent the 2011 AFL Injury Report for a comparison of our numbers versus theirs.  Before we get into the actual concussion numbers it is interesting to note the most troublesome injury in football Down Under is hamstrings.  By far this muscular injury affects more players per club per season than any other.

Back to the injury report, an injury is defined as “injury or medical condition which causes a player to miss a match”.  It does not take into consideration any ailment that a player plays through or one that resolves in time for the next match.  This is not unlike the NFL and their injury listings giving rise to an actual reporting issue – one we have discussed many times.  If you look at the report they have historical perspective as well; in terms of concussion 2011 was the highest in incidence (1.1 new concussions/team/season) since 1992 (1.3 new concussions/team/season).  There was over double the incidence of concussion from 2010 (heck almost three fold since 2006) to this past year.

The primary question was how does the official numbers jive with our numbers here; the answer is Continue reading →