The Perception of Head impacts Sustained by Collegiate Baseball Catchers: A Pilot Study

Repetitive subconcussive head impacts have been studied in a variety of contact sports and have been found to impair performance in football, soccer, hockey, and lacrosse athletes. To our knowledge no one has investigated the frequency of head impacts in the sport of collegiate baseball. To date, athlete perceived number of head impacts and actual head impacts recorded during participation have not been compared. A sample of 3 baseball catchers from one National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division III baseball team were studied.Our results indicated perceived game impacts did not differ from actual game impacts (t2=1.76, P=.23; mean difference=22.00, CI95=-34.15-78.15) and perceived practice impacts were not statistically different from actual practice impacts (t2=1.69, P=.22; mean difference=88.33, CI95=-127.75-304.42). Head impacts were more likely to occur during games (IR=333.33, CI95=66.61-600.06) compared to practices (IR= 211.54, CI95=86.53-336.55; IRR=1.58, CI95= .58-4.26). Although our preliminary study found no differences between perceived and actual head impacts, these differences should be investigated in larger studies