Acute and Longitudinal Effects of Concussion on Reactive Balance in Collegiate Athletes.
Cecilia Monoli, Amanda J Morris, Regan Crofts and 5 others
PMID 39773240WHAT IT FOUND
Collegiate athletes within 72 hours of concussion took longer to steady themselves during a push-and-release balance task while also doing a mental task.
The deficit was not seen after symptoms resolved in the main group comparison.
Key findings
01At the acute assessment, concussed athletes had longer dual-task time to stability than controls (P = .004), while single-task time to stability was not significantly different (P = .051).
02Step latency did not differ significantly between concussed athletes and controls at any timepoint in either task condition (P > .128).
03In an exploratory analysis, athletes experiencing their first lifetime concussion had longer dual-task time to stability at the acute and post-RTP assessments than controls with no lifetime concussion history.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
Attendance was not uniform across visits, so sample sizes changed at each timepoint. Many 6-month follow-up visits were lost because of COVID-19 restrictions. The pre-registered protocol did not originally include baseline testing, and baseline data were available only for a subset. The first-concussion analysis was exploratory, and comparisons across the 4 groups were not powered. Cognitive task performance was not recorded, so it is unknown how much attention athletes gave to the mental task. Task prioritization during the perturbation was not measured. Controls improved across time, which may reflect learning or training, so the acute difference was partly driven by controls getting faster. Testing occurred in a real athletic training room, so noise and administrator variability may have affected results.
Declared interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not use this study to say that concussion causes lasting reactive balance deficits. The main difference was only within 72 hours, and the first-concussion subgroup finding was exploratory.