The difference between regular physical and a sports physical is the comprehensive part of the exam. A regular physical would involve a head-to-toe exam of the child, looking at their growth on the growth chart, their weight and height and comparing their BMI weight to height ratio, talking about developmental milestones and where we are as far as meeting those milestones, their performance or their behavior at school and at home, talking about kind of the whole big picture of what’s going on with your child at that age.
A sports physical is gonna be very concentrated and focused on their performance in a sport and are they physically able and healthy enough to participate in that sport. So, we’re doing a fairly quick head-to-toe checkup just to make sure that we’re healthy enough to participate in that sport.
A concussion is basically a symptom or a group of symptoms that occurs when a child hit their head. It can be from a fall or hitting an object with their head. But when they are hit in the head and then they exhibit certain symptoms such as vomiting, lethargy, confusion, any loss of consciousness when they exhibit those symptoms after a head injury, that would be considered a concussion. There are some of those symptoms that can linger sometimes for up to a few weeks. So that’s something that we want to monitor over that time and limit their stimulus during that time and their activities that would put them at a higher risk for another head injury potential.
