Part of Rugby injuries: where they come from and which ones matter
Rugby return to play: the rule where you play, and who signs you off
Warning signs, and when to get help
Who actually sets the rule where you play
Three bodies have a say, and they sit on top of each other. World Rugby sets regulation for the game worldwide and publishes guidance that it expects member unions to treat as minimum standards. Your union turns that into the rule your club runs on, and in each of the three markets whose documents this page could read it has written that rule down with its own numbers attached. Then your clinician decides whether you personally are ready, inside whatever the rule allows.
That order matters because players usually meet it upside down. Somebody tells them a number, they count forward, and they turn up expecting to play. The number is a floor, not a plan, and every one of these documents says so.
This page does not restate the staged progression. Our concussion recovery and return to play page already carries the whole staged pathway, the country by country table and the detail for children, and a second shortened version here would create two sources of truth for a safety instruction. The shortened version is also how a six stage pathway gets read as a six day timetable, which is the single most common misreading of this subject. So the stages, the day counts and the symptom rules are there, and the layer above them is here.
What World Rugby requires, and what it only recommends
Regulation 10 is the mandatory part. Regulation 10.1.2 requires that a player diagnosed with a concussion during a game or training is removed from the field, does not return to play or train on the same day, and completes a graduated return to play protocol. Regulation 10.1.3 applies the same treatment to a suspected concussion where no appropriately qualified person is present to make the diagnosis, which is the situation at most clubs on most Saturdays. Regulation 10.1.4 asks for extra caution with players under 18. The Handbook page carrying those clauses records a last update of January 2015, so it is cited here as the regulation and not as the current dated concussion document.
The current dated document is the Concussion Guidance of August 2024, written for people involved in the non-elite level of the game, and it states that member unions must use it as minimum standards. It covers adults over 18, adolescents of 18 and under and children of 12 and under. Its headline instruction is that return to play or training on the day of a concussion or a suspected concussion is forbidden, and its minimum return to play time is 21 days for an adult player who has completed an appropriate individualised rehabilitation programme, with the identical 21 days set for children and adolescents.
Two details in that guidance are routinely quoted wrongly. The exceptions it allows sit under what it calls an advanced level of concussion care, which it says is generally available within professional rugby teams, so they are not a route available to a club side. And the six step table printed inside it is explicitly labelled as an example of a return to play process, drawn from the 2022 international consensus statement, rather than as World Rugby's own protocol.
The rule in England, New Zealand and Australia
England. The Rugby Football Union's Graduated Return to Activity and Sport programme, dated September 2023, is aligned with the UK Concussion Guidelines for Non-Elite Sport published in April 2023 and adapted for community rugby. It applies to all players involved in community rugby and sport, irrespective of age. It sets a minimum return time of 21 days, with the date of injury counted as day 0, provided there is a symptom free period of 14 days, and it describes itself as a pathway rather than a protocol, to be individualised for each player. The HEADCASE page on the union's own site, as archived in April 2025, states the same thing in one line: a minimum of 21 days for all community rugby players, across six stages.
New Zealand. New Zealand Rugby's concussion fact sheet sets a minimum stand-down of 21 days before a player goes back into a match, and it applies that minimum to every community player, in its own words "regardless of age or skill level". It also requires medical clearance before the later steps of its graduated return. Two dated versions of that fact sheet, one last reviewed in March 2025 and one printed for 2026, carry the same tables and the same 21 days, which matters, because it means the figure has been reconfirmed and not just inherited.
Australia. Rugby Australia sets a minimum of 12 days before return to play for adults aged 19 and over, and a minimum of 21 days for children and adolescents aged 18 and under. The adult figure is the only one in this section that falls below three weeks, and the next section is about what to do with it. Its Concussion Management Procedure update summary of February 2025 raised the younger figure from 19 to 21 days in response to the Australian Sports Commission's concussion guidelines for youth and community sport and World Rugby's guidance of August 2024, and states that the period for adults remains unchanged at 12 days. It also requires a player with a second confirmed concussion within 12 months to see a medical doctor and observe a minimum 21 day stand-down, runs a Blue Card process for matches at under 13 and above, and separates who does the first assessment from who gives the final clearance.
One practical warning about that last one. Older versions of Rugby Australia's procedure are still findable online and some of them carry the superseded 19 day figure for under 19s, so check the date on any document somebody sends you, and take the February 2025 update as the current statement.
Anywhere else, including the USA and Canada. This page does not have your union's number and will not guess at one, so ask your club or your union for it and get it in writing. Work to 21 days while you wait: World Rugby's guidance of August 2024 sets that as the minimum for an adult in the non-elite game and tells member unions to use the guidance as minimum standards, so a union can sit above it and not below. Separately from rugby, the national concussion guidance in the USA and in Canada sets no 21 day figure of its own, which leaves the gate there as the staged progression, a clinician's sign off, and whatever your state, province, league or school requires. That detail is on concussion recovery and return to play.
So is it 12 days or 21 days in Australia?
Act on 21 days. Both numbers are current, in different documents, from different bodies, and this page states them instead of averaging them. Rugby Australia's rule for an adult club player is 12 days. World Rugby's guidance for the non-elite game sets 21 days for an adult who has completed an individualised rehabilitation programme. And the Australian Concussion Guidelines for Youth and Community Sport, which say in their own scope that they are for youth sport and for community adult sport, set at least 14 days symptom free at rest before contact training and a minimum of 21 days before competitive contact or collision sport. That is the document our own concussion page carries for Australia. We could not trace the reasoning that originally set 12 days to anything Rugby Australia or World Rugby publishes, and we are not going to supply one.
The reason sits in World Rugby's own text rather than in our preference. Its introduction tells member unions they must use the guidance as minimum standards. Its first note says a union may introduce more stringent criteria. Its fourth note says that where a union's rest periods are more stringent, the player follows the union. Its second note goes further and deals with this situation directly: it acknowledges that some countries have national concussion management guidelines, and says those should be observed as a minimum standard of care. Every one of those runs the same way: a union may sit above the 21 days, not below it, and in Australia the national guideline is a floor in its own right. Twelve is the figure an Australian club will print on the form in front of you, it is shorter than World Rugby's minimum standard and shorter than Australia's own national guideline for community adult sport, and nothing published anywhere explains the gap.
Rugby Australia's own procedure already takes the longer line where the risk is higher, requiring 21 days and a medical doctor for a second confirmed concussion inside a year. One more document points the same way without being about rugby at all: the NHS advice to anybody who has hit their head, sport or no sport, is to stay off contact sports for at least three weeks. No randomized trial anywhere supports any of these day counts, in any country, at any age: they are consensus positions by governing bodies, which is why they differ from one another and why none of them should be described as proven. Read which way that cuts, because the player who wants to play will read it the other way. The reason there is a floor at all is the risk of taking a second knock to the head before the first one has finished recovering, and the player who runs into that is the one who came back early. An uncertain number is a reason to sit on the long side of it, not a reason to pick the short one.
Nothing in any of the documents makes the minimum a target. A player who is still getting symptoms at day 21 is not cleared by day 22, and the staged pathway on concussion recovery and return to play is what decides where you actually are.
Who has to sign you off
Somebody with a clinical qualification, and which qualifications count depends on where you play and on which end of the process you are at. Rugby Australia refers a player for the initial medical assessment to an appropriately trained healthcare practitioner, which it defines as a medical doctor, physiotherapist, nurse or nurse practitioner, and then requires the final clearance to come from a medical doctor, with the case kept open in Rugby Xplorer until it does. So an Australian club player can be assessed at the start by his physio and cannot be signed off at the end by one, and anybody telling him otherwise has read the first half of the procedure and not the second. New Zealand Rugby requires medical clearance before the later steps of its graduated return. England's programme is built to be individualised for each player, inside the 21 day minimum, with the union's HEADCASE modules written separately for players, parents, coaches, referees and first aiders.
One group of players should not be using any of these numbers at all. If you have had surgery on your head or your neck, a skull fracture, or a bleed on or around the brain, no stand-down figure in any union's rule book was written for you. Those documents set a minimum for a concussion, and a concussion is defined by the international consensus statement as an injury where nothing abnormal shows on a standard CT or MRI scan (Patricios and colleagues, 2023), so a player whose scan was not normal was never inside their scope. None of them says anything about a healed craniotomy, a plate, a shunt or a fused cervical spine.
Whether you go back into collision rugby at all is a decision for the neurosurgical or spinal team that treated you, taken at your own follow-up with your own imaging in front of them, and surgeons differ on it: after a single level neck fusion some will clear a player for contact and some will not clear anybody for scrummaging again. Nothing published settles that, so this page is not going to pick a side, and neither should a coach with a calendar. Ask the team that operated, ask for it in writing, and treat 12 days or 21 days as somebody else's question until they have answered yours. The same applies to going back to any contact after neck surgery, which is covered on rugby neck injury.
The common feature is more useful than the differences: in none of these systems does the player clear himself, and in none of them does the coach. That is the point of a stand-down. It takes the decision out of a conversation on a Thursday night between a player who wants to play and a coach who is short of a back row.
If you cannot get an appointment inside the stand-down period, the stand-down still applies. The waiting works in one direction only, which is later.
That is about the clearance appointment at the end, and about nothing else. Assessment on the day of the injury is not something you wait for: if any of the warning signs below apply, that is an emergency department or an ambulance today, and no stand-down rule, waiting list or union form changes it.
And if it is a hamstring, a shoulder or a neck?
Then no union sets you a number, and that is not the loophole it first appears to be. There is no stand-down for a hamstring because there is no regulation to write one on, which leaves the decision entirely with you, your physio and whatever tests you are prepared to fail. The rugby literature is unusually direct about what happens next: a lack of readiness to return to play is named among the risk factors for hamstring injury in a systematic review of 24 studies and 2,866 rugby union players (Chavarro-Nieto and colleagues, 2023).
So use criteria instead of a date. The return to sport test battery sets out what clinicians measure before they clear anybody for sport, and the three injury pages in this hub each say what their own evidence supports: rugby hamstring injury, rugby shoulder dislocation and rugby neck injury. A shoulder that has been stabilized has a surgeon's protocol on top of all of it, and that protocol wins.
One return this page does not cover is going back to rugby after having a baby, and no union sets a number for that one either. The pelvic floor and tummy wall side of it is on postnatal core and pelvic floor, which carries the timings for getting back to running and the pelvic health assessment that comes before impact. A collision sport then adds a question that page does not answer, which is what a pelvic floor and a healing tummy wall can take in a tackle. Nothing published settles it, so that decision belongs with a pelvic health physiotherapist and not with a page.
One exception runs the other way, and it is the neck. A suspected neck injury is not a return to play question at the time it happens, it is an emergency, and nobody goes back on the field in that match under any circumstances. The pitchside instruction is on rugby neck injury, and the rest of the sport is at rugby injuries.
When to see a physio
If you have had a head injury, the first appointment is not a physiotherapy one: it is with whoever your union's rule requires, and the warning signs below come before that.
Two things belong to that same evening, and they are the ones a coach or a parent arranges rather than the player. The NHS advice after a head injury is that an adult stays with the player for at least the first 24 hours, and that he does not drive while he is still recovering. So somebody who knows the warning signs below is with him that night, and nobody who has been knocked out, or who is being sent to an emergency department after a head knock, drives himself there or home.
Being seen and sent home does not close that window, and it is worth knowing why the 24 hours is asked for. A scan that looked normal in the evening does not rule out bleeding that only declares itself hours later, which is why somebody stays with him and watches. Any of the emergency signs below means calling an ambulance that night, even though a doctor has already looked at him once.
Physiotherapy has a real job in concussion recovery, mostly for the neck and for dizziness, and that work is set out on concussion recovery and return to play and not here.
For everything else, the appointment to make is the one you book when you start planning your return, not when the pain has gone. Bring the dates: when it happened, what you have managed since, what your position asks of you, and what the last injury of this kind did. A physio who knows you have three weeks before a cup match will plan differently from one who finds out on the day.
And if a coach, a parent or a teammate tells you that a page or a protocol says you can play, read the number again. Every union and guideline document behind this page sets a minimum, and not one of them sets a date.
Related exercise programs
Warning signs
Get emergency help now
- Emergency: a player who has gone down in contact has pain down the middle of the neck or back, numbness, tingling, burning or weakness in the arms or legs, limbs that feel heavy, a neck or back that looks out of shape, or trouble breathing. Treat it as a neck injury in the same way if the player has been knocked out, or has any injury above the collarbone, because somebody who is not fully awake cannot tell you their neck hurts. Do not move the player, and do not let anybody roll them onto their side. Call emergency services, keep the head and neck as still as possible, and wait for emergency healthcare professionals with spinal care training to move them, which is what World Rugby's own immediate care and first aid course material instructs. If you are not sure whether the neck is injured, treat it as though it is. If the player is not breathing, cannot keep their airway clear, for example because there is blood or vomit in their mouth, or you cannot be sure whether the airway is open and they are breathing, that comes first, and the emergency call handler will tell you what to do.
- Emergency: after a knock to the head, being very drowsy or finding it hard to keep your eyes open, confusion, a fit (seizure), new weakness or numbness anywhere in your body, new trouble understanding, speaking, walking or keeping your balance, new problems seeing or hearing, clear fluid coming from your ears or nose, bleeding from your ears or bruising behind them, a black eye when your eye was not hit, a dent in your head or a wound with something stuck in it, or a change in behavior. Call emergency services straight away. These can be signs of an injury to the brain.
- Emergency: after a knock to the head, you were knocked out, even for a moment, you cannot remember what happened just before or after, you have had a headache ever since, or you are being sick (vomiting). The same applies, even if you feel fine, if you take medicine that thins your blood, other than aspirin on its own, have a bleeding or clotting condition, have had brain surgery in the past, or had been drinking alcohol or taking drugs when it happened. Go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself.
- Emergency: severe neck pain after a knock to the head, whatever the fall or the knock was like. Keep still and call emergency services, and do not let anyone move you until someone trained has checked your neck. If the neck pain only starts later and nobody has checked your neck since, go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself.
- Emergency: after a knock to the head, swelling, a deep cut or severe pain at the exact spot that was hit. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself. These can be signs of a broken skull.
- Emergency: in the first days after the accident, numbness, tingling, pins and needles or weakness in your arms or legs, or a sudden electric shock feeling in your neck and back that runs into your arms or legs. If it starts straight after the accident, keep still and call emergency services. If it starts later, call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself.
- Emergency: new problems walking, for example your legs feel stiff, heavy or weak or you have become unsteady on your feet, new trouble controlling your bladder or bowels, or hands that suddenly become clumsy, for example you can no longer do up buttons. Call emergency services straight away. These can be signs of pressure on the spinal cord in the neck.
- Emergency: any sign of a stroke, even if it goes away. That means a face that droops on one side, an arm you cannot lift or keep up, slurred or muddled speech, weakness or numbness on one side of your body or face, sudden blurred vision, double vision or loss of sight, trouble swallowing, sudden dizziness with unsteadiness or falling over, a sudden severe headache, or a sudden fall where your legs give way but you do not black out (a drop attack). Call emergency services straight away.
- Emergency: dizziness with a new, severe headache, or a sudden, severe headache that feels unlike anything you have had before. Call emergency services straight away.
- Emergency: if chest pain, pressure or tightness does not ease quickly when you rest, spreads to your arm, neck, jaw, stomach or back, or comes with sweating, feeling sick, feeling light-headed or being short of breath, call emergency services straight away, as this can be a heart attack. If it eases quickly and none of these happen, get medical advice the same day, and do not exercise again until you have been checked.
- Emergency: if you faint while exercising, call emergency services, even if you feel fine again quickly.
- Emergency: after a ball, a boot, a hand or elbow, a collision or a fall to the face, any change to your sight, severe pain in the eye, a headache or finding light hard to bear, feeling sick or being sick, an eye you cannot move or keep open, or blood or pus coming from the eye. The same applies if something has pierced the eye or hit it at high speed, or if a strong chemical has gone into it. Go to an emergency department or call emergency services straight away, and do not drive yourself.
Get help today
- Same day: you blacked out or fainted, even for a moment, without any of the emergency signs above. Get medical advice the same day. Call emergency services instead if the person is not breathing, cannot be woken within 1 minute, has not fully recovered or has trouble speaking or moving, has chest pain or a pounding, fluttering or irregular heartbeat, fainted while exercising or lying down, is shaking or jerking, or was badly hurt.
- Same day: you feel dizzy after a knock to the head, without any of the emergency signs above. Get medical advice the same day.
- Same day: you have had a knock to the head and you take aspirin on its own, without any of the emergency signs above. Get medical advice the same day. Aspirin on its own is the only blood thinning medicine left out of the emergency line above, and the NHS still asks anybody taking a medicine that thins the blood to get urgent advice after a head injury.
- Same day: pins and needles in an arm together with neck or arm pain, or an arm that feels heavy or weak, and nobody has checked it yet. Get medical advice the same day. If it came on in contact and the symptoms are still there, or this is the first time it has happened, follow the first line in this list instead and get help at the ground, because World Rugby's own course material treats that player as a possible neck injury.
- Same day: an arm or hand that is getting weaker. Get medical advice the same day.
- Same day: an electric shock feeling runs down your back or into your arms or legs as your head bends forward, without any of the emergency signs above. Stop and get medical advice the same day.
Common questions
Who decides when I can play rugby again after a concussion?
Two parties, and both have to be satisfied. The clinical decision belongs to a clinician: New Zealand Rugby's fact sheet requires medical clearance before the later steps of its graduated return, and Rugby Australia refers the player for an initial medical assessment by what it calls an appropriately trained healthcare practitioner, meaning a medical doctor, physiotherapist, nurse or nurse practitioner, then requires final clearance by a medical doctor, with the case kept open in Rugby Xplorer until that clearance is in. The regulatory decision belongs to your union, and it does not care how well you feel: World Rugby Regulation 10 requires any player diagnosed with concussion during a game or training to be removed and to complete a graduated return to play protocol, and applies the same to a suspected concussion where no appropriately qualified person is present. England's Graduated Return to Activity and Sport programme describes itself as a pathway rather than a protocol, to be individualised for each player, inside a minimum of 21 days. So nobody is cleared by feeling fine, by a coach, or by a parent, and the staged pathway itself is set out on concussion recovery and return to play.
Why can an international come back on in the same match when I cannot?
Because the Law he is playing under does not apply to your game, and World Rugby says so in plain terms. In the notes to its August 2024 concussion guidance, World Rugby states that temporary replacement for a head injury assessment applies only in World Rugby approved elite adult matches, and that the head injury assessment and temporary replacement Law does not apply to community rugby at any level or age, nor to any match or tournament that World Rugby has not approved. What a club player watches on a Saturday afternoon is therefore a procedure run by a match day doctor inside an approved elite competition. In community rugby there is no assessment that puts a player back on the field: a suspected concussion means the player is removed and does not play or train again that day. If your club has nobody qualified to assess a head injury, the suspicion alone is enough, which is Regulation 10.1.3.
Is the minimum stand-down 12 days or 21 days in Australia?
Act on 21. Rugby Australia's own documents say 12 days for adults aged 19 and over and 21 days for players aged 18 and under, and its Concussion Management Procedure update summary of February 2025 states that the adult period remains unchanged at 12 days while the period for under 19s was extended from 19 to 21 days. Two other current documents sit above that. The Australian Concussion Guidelines for Youth and Community Sport, written for youth sport and for community adult sport, set a minimum of 21 days before competitive contact or collision sport, and that is the guidance our own concussion recovery and return to play page carries for Australia. World Rugby's guidance of August 2024 sets 21 days for an adult in the non-elite game and tells member unions to use it as minimum standards, adding that where a union's rest periods are more stringent the player follows the union. Unions may therefore sit above 21 days, and nothing in those documents lets one sit below it, which is why an adult Australian club player is better served by the longer figure. Rugby Australia itself requires a minimum 21 day stand-down and a medical doctor's involvement for a player with a second confirmed concussion within 12 months. A minimum is not a target in any of these documents, and the only person who should be deciding your date is the clinician who assessed you.
Is it different for my 15 year old?
In two of our three markets the published minimum is the same for a child as for an adult, and in the third it is longer for the child than for the adult. England's programme applies to all players involved in community rugby and sport irrespective of age, inside a minimum of 21 days. New Zealand Rugby requires a minimum 21 day stand-down for every community player regardless of age or skill level. Rugby Australia sets 21 days for players aged 18 and under against 12 days for adults, having extended the younger figure from 19 to 21 days in February 2025 in response to the Australian Sports Commission's concussion guidelines for youth and community sport and World Rugby's guidance of August 2024. World Rugby Regulation 10.1.4 also asks for extra caution with players under 18, and its 2024 guidance sets the same 21 day minimum for children and adolescents as for adults. The Australian guidelines go one step further for this age group and say that athletes under 19 should not have access to the earlier clearance available in advanced care settings, so there is no faster route for a teenager anywhere in these documents. What that adds up to for a parent is that the floor is three weeks in all three countries for anyone aged 18 or under, that school and learning come before sport, and that the detail of recovery in children is on concussion recovery and return to play.
How do I know I am ready after a hamstring or a shoulder injury?
By passing tests rather than by reaching a date, because no union sets a day count for anything except concussion. The rugby specific evidence makes the point from the other direction: a systematic review of 24 studies and 2,866 rugby union players names a lack of readiness to return to play after injury among the risk factors for hamstring injury in this sport, which is to say that coming back unready is itself a cause of the next injury (Chavarro-Nieto and colleagues, 2023). A clinician looks at strength compared with the other side, control at speed and under fatigue, and whether the movement your position demands can be done without hesitation. The return to sport test battery sets those tests out, and the injury specific pages are rugby hamstring injury, rugby shoulder dislocation and rugby neck injury.
References
- World Rugby. Regulation 10, Medical. World Rugby Handbook. https://www.world.rugby/wr-resources/World_Rugby_Handbook/EN/pubData/SEO/Page_177.html
- World Rugby. Concussion Guidance, August 2024. https://resources.worldrugby-rims.pulselive.com/worldrugby/document/2024/08/26/ab286493-d1b4-4213-b476-ee6309a3f9c9/Concussion-Guidance-August-2024.pdf
- World Rugby Passport. First Aid in Rugby, Chapter 5: Neck and spinal injuries in Rugby Union. https://passport.world.rugby/player-welfare-medical/first-aid-in-rugby/chapter-5-neck-and-spinal-injuries-in-rugby-union/
- World Rugby Passport. Immediate Care in Rugby, Spinal Injuries: recognition, assessment and management. https://passport.world.rugby/player-welfare-medical/immediate-care-in-rugby/spinal-injuries/recognition/
- Rugby Football Union. HEADCASE: Graduated Return to Activity and Sport (GRAS) Programme, community rugby. September 2023. https://rfu.widen.net/s/8vnbbhrmpz/gras-programe_aug_2023
- Rugby Football Union. HEADCASE. englandrugby.com, as archived 9 April 2025. https://web.archive.org/web/20250409031256/https://www.englandrugby.com/run/player-welfare/headcase
- Rugby Australia. Concussion management. https://www.rugby.com.au/more/codes-and-policies/safety-and-welfare/concussion-management
- Rugby Australia. Concussion Management Procedure update summary, February 2025. https://d26phqdbpt0w91.cloudfront.net/NonVideo/4e9a60c3-d1d7-41aa-4bae-08dd4c795fd2.pdf
- New Zealand Rugby. NZR Concussion Recovery Fact Sheet, graduated return to play, last reviewed March 2025. https://nzrugby.co.nz/assets/GRTP-2025-updated.pdf
- New Zealand Rugby. Concussion Fact Sheet 2026. https://www.nzrugby.co.nz/assets/Concussion-Fact-Sheet_2026_B+W_PRINT-1.pdf
- Patricios JS, Schneider KJ, Dvorak J, et al. Consensus statement on concussion in sport: the 6th International Conference on Concussion in Sport, Amsterdam, October 2022. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2023;57(11):695-711. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2023-106898
- Sport and Recreation Alliance and UK Government. UK concussion guidelines for non-elite (grassroots) sport. Published 2023, updated November 2024. https://sportandrecreation.org.uk/campaigns-and-policy/concussion/concussion-guidelines-for-grassroots-sport-html-version
- Australian Institute of Sport, Australasian College of Sport and Exercise Physicians, Sports Medicine Australia and Australian Physiotherapy Association. Australian Concussion Guidelines for Youth and Community Sport. June 2024. https://www.ausport.gov.au/concussion
- Chavarro-Nieto C, Beaven M, Gill N, Hebert-Losier K. Hamstrings injury incidence, risk factors, and prevention in Rugby Union players: a systematic review. The Physician and Sportsmedicine. 2023;51(1):1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913847.2021.1992601
- NHS. Head injury and concussion. Page last reviewed 29 May 2025. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/head-injury-and-concussion/
- National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). Head injury: assessment and early management. NICE guideline NG232. 2023. https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng232
- NHS. Chest pain. Page last reviewed 8 August 2023. https://www.nhs.uk/symptoms/chest-pain/
- NHS. Symptoms of a stroke. Page last reviewed 12 September 2024. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stroke/symptoms/
- NHS. Eye injuries. Page last reviewed 12 March 2026. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/eye-injuries/
- NHS. Fainting. Page last reviewed 23 November 2023. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/fainting/
Written and checked by the PocketPhysio editorial team. Last updated 2026-11-06.
This page is general education, not a diagnosis or a personal treatment plan. See a physiotherapist or doctor for advice about your own situation.