When asked what sports are at the top of the list for presenting head injury risks to participants, boxing might come to mind for many people.

That would be a good assumption, according to a recent report from Canada that tracks hospital injury reports. The study has led to a strong media focus on the heightened and serious risks of traumatic brain injury that the sport poses for participants, especially children and teenagers.

Researchers say that boxing is especially dangerous for youthful participants because they take longer to recover from head blows than adults do and because the neuro-cognitive effects of a head injury last longer for them.

That has led some critics to push for an outright ban on children and teens boxing at all. The American Academy of Pediatricians recently joined the Canadian Paediatric Society, for example, in favoring such a prohibition. The coalition suggested participation in other sports instead, "where the prime focus is not deliberate blows to the head."

One Canadian head-injury specialist notes that, although the headgear worn in amateur boxing does help protect against teeth and soft-tissue injuries, it protects far less against concussions and other head injuries resulting from direct blows to the head.

Former Canadian Olympic boxer Rick Duff thinks that boxing is being unduly singled out in the head-injury debate, noting that head injury risks also exist in other contact sports. Duff says that amateur boxing authorities have taken care to ensure the routine use of many preventative safeguards by participants, including head gear, mouthpieces and larger gloves.

"Injuries do happen," he says, "but we do everything we can to prevent them."

Related Resource: Lethbridge Herald, "Doctors argue against boxing; those closest to the sport disagree" Sept. 6, 2011