Intracranial injuries resulting from boxing

The collected experience for around the world of 659 fatalities in professional prize fighting and amateur boxing over the past 80 years averages less than eight per year. The occurrence of acute and chronic nonfatal encephalopathy cannot be directly related to either the fatalities or the relative risk of exposure because accurate figures for the numbers of bouts and numbers of exposures for individual fighters are not available. Many antemortem and postmortem studies, especially during the last half of this period, demonstrate that acute and chronic brain damage among fighters is significantly common and is related directly to the number of bouts fought for each fighter.