Repeat Concussion and Recovery Time in a Primary Care Pediatric Office

Abstract

The authors enrolled 95 patients in a primary care office who presented with a concussion. Of these patients, 63% were sport concussions. The authors matched 90 of these patients to children in the authors' practice presenting for sports physicals or regular check-ups in the following demographics: age, participating in a particular sport, having attention-deficit disorder/attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, gender, and grade. The authors found the odds of recurrent concussions, in a primary care pediatric office, to be a ratio of 2.909 (95% confidence interval 1.228-7.287). Recovery time for repeat concussion versus an initial concussion was analyzed. Patients with a recurrent concussion after a year recovered an average of 12.0 days after injury versus 13.4 days for those with no previous concussion (NS). Patients with a recurrent concussion within a year recovered a mean of 6.27 (SD 1.29) days sooner than patients with no previous concussion (P < .0001). This unexpected finding is preliminary, and the authors encourage further research.

Epidemiology of recurrent traumatic brain injury in the general population

“…Seven of these publications were studies completed on the same population as another publication that met the inclusion criteria but that had a smaller sample size. As such, 22 studies were retained for rTBI risk analysis and 11 studies 26,[30][31][32][35][36][37]40,43,46,47 were retained for the analysis of rTBI RFs (figure 1). A meta-analysis was not completed because of significant methodologic heterogeneity between included studies.…”

“…Study methods and characteristics were heterogeneous (table 1 and further details in table e-1) and only 50% of the studies had a primary aim related to rTBI. Cases were mainly ascertained from administrative data (41%), [25][26][27][28][29][30]34,39,44 but some studies used surveys (18.1%), 24,32,35,37 medical charts (31.8%), 31,36,38,40,42,43,45 and trauma registries (9%). 33,41 Index and rTBI case definitions varied significantly across studies.…”

Sport-Related Concussion in Children and Adolescents

“…Athletes who sustain a second concussion within 1 year after recovery from the first concussion were not found to have a longer recovery time than that of the initial concussion. 180…”

The care of the concussed pediatric patient prior to presentation to primary care pediatrician versus concussion specialists: Implications for management

“…Information on the specifics of the data collection and analysis has been previously published. 22,28 For comparison, two specialty clinics involved with concussion care in the Cooper University Health System, Camden, New Jersey were approached and agreed to participate in this study: 1) the Sports Medicine Clinic, designed to care for sportsrelated concussions, and 2) the Pediatric Concussion Clinic, designed to see patients with concussions sustained from non-sports activities or non-traditional sports. These specialty clinics were selected because they serve patients from seven locations in southern New Jersey, with a catchment similar to the primary care pediatric practice.…”