Baseline and Post Concussion Testing

There have been numerous discussions about concussions on here before, but I thought I would share real numbers from post-concussion testing. Some people might think these tests are a bit of hooey. Some might think it's a scare tactic. But I'd thought I'd share anyway.

On June 30th, my DD suffered a concussion when she collided with another player. The sports medical trainer recommended no electronics, no tv, no lights, etc, until she was symptom free for 48 hours. Her symptoms (light sensitivity, noise sensitivity, headache) lasted seven days.

On October 18th, she suffered another concussion in a multi-player collision. My DD ended up on the ground and another player fell on top of her, kneeing her in the head right behind her ear. By the end of the game she proclaimed she was fine, no headache, nothing. Two days later the concussion symptoms finally showed themselves. She missed an entire week of school and had to spend most of that time in the dark of her room, even limiting her interaction with her family. By the end of that week, she was mostly symptom free. The only complaint was high pitched sounds which the doctors felt had more to do with the impact location than the concussion itself. However, they pressed for us to see a pediatric neurologist at the concussion clinic.

On October 29th, eleven days after the injury and five days of being symptom free, she took ImPACT, a computerized neurocognitive test. Not having a baseline to compare it to, the doctor asked what kind of classes/grades she had in school. DD is an A/B+ student in 8th grade and takes advanced courses so he felt it was safe to assume she'd score in the 70% on a bell curve. It didn't matter what he assumed since her results were so poor.

Today, she retook the exam, 31 days after her last concussion.

In memory composite (verbal), she went from 11% to 73%.
In memory composite (visual), she went from 22% to 98%.
In visible motor speed composite, she went from 27% to 85%.

Before my DD took the initial exam, she thought she'd pass it without any problems even though she felt it was taking her "a little longer to process things". When the doctor told her the average reaction time is between 3 and 3.5 seconds and she was averaging over 8 seconds, she realized things weren't as good as she thought.

So the long story short here is even if your child is symptom free doesn't mean they are not still suffering the effects.

The scary part for me as parent was if my pediatrician hadn't been a bulldog about taking her to the concussion clinic (she called me at home three times after seeing my DD), we might never have known the extent of her post concussion symptoms. She could have easily returned to practice and playing full time. And with her reaction times so slowed, she could have easily been injured again before being completely healed.

Excellent post.

Sorry about the DD, but glad she is feeling better.

Head trauma is nothing to take lightly.

Our dd suffered one at 10 and we learned a lot also. It will scare the heck out of you when you go through it. I still want to put head gear on her and think it should be required.  For people that don't know they are very vulnerable to another if not given time to heal and if that happens it can cause irreversible damage. I wish your dd the best and thanks for this thread.

soccerjack wrote:Our dd suffered one at 10 and we learned a lot also. It will scare the heck out of you when you go through it. I still want to put head gear on her and think it should be required.  For people that don't know they are very susceptible to another if not given time to heal and if that happens it can cause irreversible damage. I wish your dd the best and thanks for this thread.  

As an add on the er drs told us she was fine and could do whatever she wanted. When we took her to pediatrician on Monday he locked her down like the op mentioned until she could pass the impact test. There is a lot of ignorance on concussions.