Anyone who has seen athletes in the middle of a game know that most will downplay an injury if they believe they can still, regardless of the consequences. We’ve all seen an athlete sprain an ankle, get knocked down and struggle to get up and keep playing even when common sense says that it’s better to take it easy.

In many cases, no long-term damage results but in the cases of concussion we simply don’t really know. This is compounded because even our hospital tests (never mind side-line tests) are not very accurate. Here is where things get interesting. When asked anonymously to answer a concussion questionnaire Meehan, et al 2013 found that 30.5% (148 of 486) of the participants had symptoms of an undiagnosed concussion!

This reveals that not only is our measuring poor but our very definition of when we measure might need reworking.