An astonishing new report suggests that nearly 2 million children may be suffering from sports or recreation related concussions each year, and many of them are going untreated — meaning a huge number of children are at risk of serious health problems later in life.

Researchers estimate that between 1.1 and 1.9 million children suffer a concussion each year based on analysis of three national databases that contain injury information, according to an ABC News report.

Researchers published their findings in the journal Pediatrics. They examined three national databases, and found that between 511,590 and 1,240,972 concussions go untreated in children under 18 each and every year.

Concussions can be extremely serious, and an athlete should be pulled from play until they can be evaluated. Undiagnosed concussions can cause long term problems for a person.

A recent statement from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia on the same subject states: “New research from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) highlights a substantial gap in how the United States currently estimates the nation’s burden of pediatric concussions. Among 0- to 17-year-olds who have a CHOP primary care physician and were diagnosed with a concussion within CHOP’s regional pediatric network, 82 percent had their first concussion visit at a primary care site, 12 percent at the emergency department, 5 percent within specialty care (sports medicine, neurology, trauma), and 1 percent were directly admitted to the hospital. Many current counts of concussion injury among children are based solely on emergency department (E.D.) visits or on organized high school and college athletics data. Thus, the authors say, we may be vastly underestimating child and youth concussions in the US.”

“We learned two really important things about pediatric concussion healthcare practices,” says Kristy Arbogast, PhD, lead author and Co-Scientific Director of CHOP’s Center for Injury Research and Prevention. “First, four in five of this diverse group of children were diagnosed at a primary care practice–not the emergency department. Second, one-third were under age 12, and therefore represent an important part of the concussion population that is missed by existing surveillance systems that focus on high school athletes.”