As a physician who covers over 200 sporting events in a year, I am shocked by the Mr Hughes comments.
Doctors can make recommendations, which we frequently do. We can provide data, which we frequently do. We can provide the appropriate documentation to coached, parents and administrators.

Despite all of this, much of our day involves battling the same parents, coaches and administrators when we make efforts to advocate for the student athlete. This, fortunately, does not often involve life threatening issues. Most of the time it is simply over whether a kid should play with a sprained ankle.

The "new" concussion guideline have been nearly impossible to get "buy in" for. Holding the star quarterback out of a big game is never popular. We had a coach go public in the paper stating that our groups concussion policy (which was 2 years ahead of the NFLs) was "killing his program."

Until we get back to a point when the patient and the patient's support group walks out of the doctor's office, thanking the provider for doing the right thing (insetad of threatening to get a court order or multiple second opintions) we will see this time and time again.

Most sudden cardiac death issues are not caused by conditions that are detectable in screening sports physicals.

Unfortunately, the costs (1.2 million dollars to screen 30,000 students) would have to be picked up by someone.
Even doing the screening would produce false positives that would lead to additional studies.

This type of reporting is often misconstrued by the general public as being fact.

To the general public, it is not.