Litigation

More evidence that children need to be assessed following a concussion before being allowed to go back to sports or play time activities

By Michael Kaplen

Children hospitalized with concussions should wait until they are seen by a clinician in a follow-up exam before returning to regular sports or playtime activities, according to researchers at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Rather than only consulting a doctor when there are obvious trouble signs after the initial treatment, the Children's Hospital researchers recommend that a qualified healthcare provider perform a formal assessment after hospital discharge but before child resumes exertional activities. The study team used a computer-based testing program created to assess athletes with concussions and determine when it was safe to return to play. The authors found that nearly all the children admitted to the hospital with a concussion had some abnormal brain function during initial testing.

The  article appears in the May issue of the journal Annals of Surgery.

Prior research has demonstrated that children are more likely to sustain another concussion if they return to play or exertional activities prematurely. In addition, high school athletes recover more slowly than college or professional athletes. Presumably the same is true for children with concussion from non-sports related causes.

The study, which looked at 116 children ages 11 through 17 at an urban Level 1 trauma center over two years, set out to determine if measurable impairments existed in children admitted to the hospital with a concussion and if the computer-based testing program could be easily used in the hospital setting. The computer assessment is administered bedside and takes about 25 minutes.

The test results revealed an alarmingly high rate of cognitive deficits in nearly all patients. It tests specific abilities, such as attention span, memory, nonverbal problem solving and reaction time. Almost all patients tested below the 25 percentile in at least one area; the majority demonstrated significant impairment for all four subtests.

The test also assesses the degree of concussion symptoms, and the majority of children with concussions demonstrated an abnormal symptom score. The follow-up group demonstrated significant improvement in neurocognitive performance on all four subtests as well as an improvement in their symptom scores.

Full post as published by Brain Injury News and Information on May 28, 2009 (boomark / email).