Event Title

Does Concussion Severity affect Academic Return in Athletes?

Location

Parker-Reed, SSWAC

Start Date

30-4-2015 9:00 AM

End Date

30-4-2015 10:55 AM

Project Type

Poster

Description

Purpose: Mild Traumatic Brain Injuries (mTBI), or concussions, present with subtle symptoms, but are just as serious as other injuries student-athletes face. Zuckerman et al. calculated the average days until a concussed athlete returned to baseline levels of verbal and visual memory, reaction time, processing speed and post-concussion symptom level. The neurocognitive performance, as investigated by Zuckerman et al., have direct relation to school performance abilities. Without a fully recovered verbal or visual memory, studying skills are impaired and persistent concussion symptoms, such as headaches, make focusing in class more difficult. This leads to the question: how does the severity of a concussion effect academic return? Methods: Concussion data from 14 high schools (n=287) and 11 Division-3 colleges (n=358) was collected. Birth year, gender, sport, symptom score following concussion, whether the concussion occurred in a game or practice in or out of season, migraine and ADHD history, number of previous concussions, injury date and time, and return dates to academics and athletics were available. Data was analyzed using Stata software to perform various statistical analyses. Results: A positive correlation was found between athletes symptom scores and their days to academic and athletic return. However, symptom score only affects academic return after a certain threshold. Conclusions: Symptom score only affects academic return after a certain threshold. Also, lower symptom scores have little variation time to academic return.

Sponsoring Department

Colby College. Biology Dept.

CLAS Field of Study

Natural Sciences

Event Website

http://www.colby.edu/clas

ID

1174

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Apr 30th, 9:00 AM Apr 30th, 10:55 AM

Does Concussion Severity affect Academic Return in Athletes?

Parker-Reed, SSWAC

Purpose: Mild Traumatic Brain Injuries (mTBI), or concussions, present with subtle symptoms, but are just as serious as other injuries student-athletes face. Zuckerman et al. calculated the average days until a concussed athlete returned to baseline levels of verbal and visual memory, reaction time, processing speed and post-concussion symptom level. The neurocognitive performance, as investigated by Zuckerman et al., have direct relation to school performance abilities. Without a fully recovered verbal or visual memory, studying skills are impaired and persistent concussion symptoms, such as headaches, make focusing in class more difficult. This leads to the question: how does the severity of a concussion effect academic return? Methods: Concussion data from 14 high schools (n=287) and 11 Division-3 colleges (n=358) was collected. Birth year, gender, sport, symptom score following concussion, whether the concussion occurred in a game or practice in or out of season, migraine and ADHD history, number of previous concussions, injury date and time, and return dates to academics and athletics were available. Data was analyzed using Stata software to perform various statistical analyses. Results: A positive correlation was found between athletes symptom scores and their days to academic and athletic return. However, symptom score only affects academic return after a certain threshold. Conclusions: Symptom score only affects academic return after a certain threshold. Also, lower symptom scores have little variation time to academic return.

https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/clas/2015/program/2