Does Football Cause Brain Damage?

The critical issues in the clinical management of sports concussion include confirming the diagnosis, excluding structural abnormality and determining when players can be safely returned to competition. Despite the apparent simplicity of this process, the management of this one injury seems to provoke more debate than all other sports injuries combined. Unfortunately, this debate has largely been played out in the news media rather than through scientific journals. Complex issues have been oversimplified and distorted, causing significant alarm over putative long-term risks and concern over how an acute injury should be managed.