Symptom profile of affirmative responses to a self-report concussion question, United States 2019.
Jill Daugherty, Kelly Sarmiento, Lindsay S Womack and 1 others
PMID 34487455WHAT IT FOUND
About 2.6% of surveyed adults reported a concussion in the past year, but one-third of them reported only one symptom or none.
A single self-report question may identify people who did not sustain a concussion.
Key findings
01About 2.6% of respondents said they had a concussion in the past 12 months.
02Among those who reported a concussion, 13.5% reported no symptoms, 19.1% reported one symptom, 15.7% reported two symptoms, and 51.7% reported three or more symptoms.
03Headache was the most commonly reported symptom at 55.1%, followed by dizziness or balance problems at 40.5%.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
Only a small percentage of respondents reported concussion, so analyses within that subgroup were underpowered. All data were self-reported and subject to recall bias, which could inflate past-12-month reporting. The results cannot be considered nationally representative. The survey was offered only in English, so non-English speakers were missing.
Declared interests
The authors report no conflicts of interest. They accessed the survey data through a data-use agreement with Porter Novelli Public Services.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the 2.6% self-report rate as a confirmed concussion rate. One-third of those who answered yes reported one symptom or no symptoms, and the results were not nationally representative.