Objective: To examine the ethical and legal issues physicians face when evaluating and managing athletes with sports-related concussions, and to offer guidance to physicians as they navigate these situations.Results: This position paper reviews and compares the components of sports-related concussion laws, including education, removal from play, and clearance for return to play. It highlights the challenges privacy laws present relevant to providing care to concussed athletes and suggests ways to help physicians overcome these obstacles. The report also explores the ethical considerations physicians should bear in mind as they evaluate and manage concussed athletes, addressing them through a framework that includes considerations of professionalism, informed decision-making, patient autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, conflicts of interest, and distributive justice.Conclusions: Physicians caring for concussed athletes have an ethical obligation to ensure that their primary responsibility is to safeguard the current and future physical and mental health of their patients. Physicians have a duty to provide athletes and their parents with information about concussion risk factors, symptoms, and the risks for postconcussion neurologic impairments. Physicians should facilitate informed and shared decision-making among athletes, parents, and medical teams while protecting athletes from potential harm. Additionally, including concussion evaluation and management training in neurology residency programs, as well as developing a national concussion registry, will benefit patients by the development of policies and clinical guidelines that optimize prevention and treatment of concussive head injury. Over the past few years, sports-related concussion has become a major health concern in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 1.6-3.8 million sports-related concussions occur each year.1 Although a majority of these injuries occur while playing football, concussions are also common in other contact sports, like soccer, lacrosse, hockey, rugby, and basketball. [2][3][4][5] Concussions can have devastating effects, such as shortterm impairments in athletes' cognitive and athletic performance. Repetitive concussions, and even subconcussive impacts, have been associated with long-term impairments in neurocognitive functioning, behavioral problems, premature dementia, and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. 5-12Evaluating and managing sports-related concussion raises a variety of distinctive ethical and legal issues for physicians, especially relating to return-to-play decisions. A recent survey conducted by the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) demonstrated that while a majority of neurologists see patients with sportsrelated neurologic concerns, most do not receive formal or informal training regarding concussion. 13 The purpose of this position paper is to explore the ethical and legal issues physicians face when evaluating and managing athletes with sports-related conc...

Legal standards for HIV testing are evolving in an attempt to achieve an ethical equilibrium between the privacy rights of infected or potentially infected individuals and public health considerations that seek to limit the spread and severity of the disease through early recognition and treatment. Although guided by US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations, these standards are determined by state law. In this case, an ethical dilemma is presented and discussed in which the privacy interests of an HIV-infected individual come into conflict with the health considerations of an inadvertently exposed neurology resident and her unborn child, a conundrum amplified by the restricted HIV testing laws of the state in which the incident took place.