Citation

Broglio SP, Eckner JT, Surma T, Kutcher JS. J. Neurotrauma 2011; 28(10): 2061-2068.

Affiliation

University of Michigan, Kinesiology, 1402 Washington Heights, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States, 48109; broglio@umich.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, Mary Ann Liebert Publishers)

DOI

10.1089/neu.2011.1905

PMID

21644811

Abstract

Concussion is a major public health concern with nearly 4 million injuries occurring each year in the United States. In the acute post-injury stage concussed individuals demonstrate cognitive function and motor control declines as well as increased symptom reports. Researchers have hypothesized the severity of these impairments to be related to impact magnitude. Using the Head Impact Telemetry System (HITS) to record head impact biomechanics, we sought to correlate pre and post-concussive impact characteristics with declines in cognitive performance and increases in concussion related symptoms. Over four seasons, 19 high school football athletes wearing instrumented helmets sustained 20 diagnosed concussions. Each athlete completed a baseline computer-based symptom and cognitive assessment during the pre-season and a post-injury assessment within 24 hours of injury. Correlational analyses identified no significant relationships between symptom or cognitive performance change scores and impact biomechanics (i.e., time from session start until injury, time from the previous impact, peak linear acceleration, peak rotational acceleration, and HIT-severity profile). Nor were there any significant relationships between change scores and the number of impacts, cumulative linear acceleration, cumulative rotational acceleration, or cumulative HIT-severity profile values associated with all impacts prior to or following the injury. This investigation is the first to examine the relationship between concussion impact characteristics, including cumulative impact profiles, and post-morbid outcomes in high school athletes. There appears to be no association between head impact biomechanics and post-concussive outcomes. As such, the use of biomechanical variables to predict injury severity does not appear feasible at this time.

Keywords: American football;

Language: en