One of the latest safety studies addressing combat sports, published last month in the journal Australasian Epidemiologist, the author compiled data from a total of 47 observational studies addressing injuries in combat sports.  Specifically the author looked for the injury incidence rate, injury patterns and injury severity rates in 6 different sports, namely boxing, judo, karate, kickboxing, mixed martial arts, … More Study – MMA Has Greatest Injury Rate Among Combat Sports

Adding to this site’s archived safety studies in combat sports, a study was recently published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine suggesting headguards can reduce concussions in combat sports. The authors, McIntosh and Patton, recently authored another article suggesting the quality of headguards can make a significant difference in effectiveness, noted in the new … More Study Suggests Headguards Reduce Concussions in Combat Sports

Adding to this site’s archives canvassing safety studies in combat sports, a study was recently published in The Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine comparing boxing and MMA injury rates over a 13 year period. The study, titled Combative Sports Injuries: An Edmonton Retrospective, reviewed post fight medical exams for combat sports bouts in Edmonton from … More MMA Results In More Overall Injuries Than Boxing but Less Brain Trauma Study Reports

A study was recently published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine reviewing the Amateur International Boxing Association’s recent rule change to remove headgear from international competition. In the recent study (Because Not All Blows To the Head are the Same) the authors suggest that one type of impact, namely head clashes, can lead to … More Headgear Revisited – Study Suggests Increased Head Clashes Reason to Bring Back Headgear in Amateur Boxing

As recently discussed, one of the most important questions in combat sports medicine is how much head trauma is too much? Although the answer is not known, the current regulatory landscape could use improvement in deciding when regulators should pull the plug on an athlete that is ‘too tough for their own good‘.  To this … More Professional Boxing Urged to Adopt Uniform National Standards For Brain Safety

Update – August 18, 2015 – another useful discussion was recently published in the text “Brain Neurotrauma” confirming that more insight into CTE is needed with the authors noting “Despite extensive publicity, the real risk of CTE among amateur and professional players has not been measured or adequately characterized and notions derived from autopsy studies, … More CTE Linked To Duration of Contact More Than Concussive History

Getting hit in the head is not good.  How much head trauma is too much?   As the executive director of the Sports Legacy Institute tells us, nobody really knows but the connection to CTE is clearly there – What is known, however, is that trauma is cumulative and there is only so much mileage an athlete … More Brain Injury in Boxing Increases With Level of Competition

Adding to this site’s archives canvassing safety studies in combat sports, two studies were published this month in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.  The first addressed injury rates in elite level amateur boxing.  The second addressed the impact performance of various headgear. The first study titled “Boxing Injury Epidemiology in the Great Britain Team” … More Studies Published Addressing Boxing Injury Rates and Headgear Effectiveness

Adding to this site’s archived posts addressing safety studies in combative sports, an importation study was published in the Annals of Neurology this month finding that traumatic brain injury likely causes accelerated atrophy “aging” the brain by an average of over four years. In the recent study conducted by James H. Cole, PhD, Robert Leech, … More Traumatic Brain Injury Ages the Brain By Over Four Years