A concussion is a mild traumatic brain injury caused by a blow or jolt to the head that can affect how the brain functions, and it’s a particularly common injury among children who participate in sports.¹ Superficial head injuries, such as cuts and abrasions to the scalp and face, are also a common reason children seek care.² Prior work has described seasonal variation in pediatric injuries and a concentration of sports-related concussions during the academic year,³ but less is known about how the timing and magnitude of these patterns differ across pediatric age groups, between injury types, and by sex. Understanding when different head injuries cluster across the year can help health systems anticipate demand and target prevention and counseling efforts.
We studied more than 58 million pediatric patients with visits between January 2017 and February 2026 to understand patterns in visits for concussions and superficial head injuries. To avoid counting the same injury more than once, additional concussion-related diagnoses within 90 days of an initial event were treated as part of the same event.
In 2025, children aged 14–18 had the most pronounced pattern, with the monthly rate climbing to 1,105 per 100,000 in October compared to 331 per 100,000 in July, as shown in Figure 1. Children aged 10–13 followed a similar seasonal trend in concussion diagnoses, while the two youngest groups account for a much smaller proportion and varied far less across the year. The concentration of older-child concussions in the fall is consistent with prior reports linking pediatric concussion to the academic and athletic calendar.³
The seasonal timing of concussion was similar for males and females, but males were diagnosed at consistently higher rates, especially at the seasonal peak. Both sexes peaked in October and reached their lowest rates in midsummer, indicating a shared underlying cycle. The average October peak for males between 2017 and 2025 reached about 591 per 100,000 compared to about 355 per 100,000 for females, a gap that narrowed during the summer when the two rates were nearly equal. The widening of the male-female difference specifically at the fall peak suggests that the activities driving the seasonal surge are more common among, or carry higher concussion risk for, male children.
In contrast, superficial head injuries were most common in the early summer months and in the youngest age groups, reaching a peak of 1,211 per 100,000 among children aged 0–4 in July 2025.
Like concussion diagnoses, males were more commonly diagnosed with superficial head injuries than females, but this trend remained more consistent throughout the year.
