• J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatr. · Apr 2022

    Neurocognitive functioning and symptoms across levels of collision and contact in male high school athletes.

    • Jessie R Oldham, David Howell, Corey Lanois, Paul Berkner, Grant L Iverson, Rebekah Mannix, and William Meehan.
    • Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, Richmond, Virginia, USA jessie.oldham@vcuhealth.org.
    • J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatr. 2022 Apr 27.

    ObjectiveWe sought to determine whether male collision sport athletes perform worse on computerised neurocognitive assessments and report higher symptom burdens than athletes in contact (but not collision) sports and athletes in non-contact sports.MethodsThis cross-sectional study used data collected by the Massachusetts Concussion Management Coalition on high school boys who underwent computerised neurocognitive testing between 2009 and 2018. We divided sports participation in three different sport types: (1) collision, (2) contact, non-collision and (3) non-contact. Our outcomes included the four computerised neurocognitive composite scores (verbal memory, visual memory, visual motor speed and reaction time) and the total symptom score. The independent variable was sport type (collision, contact, non-contact), adjusted for age, concussion history and comorbidities.ResultsOf the 92 979 athletes (age: 15.59±2.08 years) included in our study, collision sport athletes performed minimally but significantly worse than other athletes on neurocognitive composite scores (verbal memory: β=-1.64, 95% CI -1.85 to -1.44; visual memory: β=-1.87, 95% CI -2.14 to -1.60; visual motor speed: β=-2.12, 95% CI -2.26 to -1.97; reaction time: β=0.02, 95% CI 0.02 to 0.02). Collision and contact sport athletes also had slightly but significantly lower total symptom scores (collision: 3.99±7.17; contact: 3.78±6.81; non-contact: 4.32±7.51, p<0.001, η2=0.001) than non-contact sport athletes.ConclusionThere are minimal observed differences in performance on neurocognitive assessments between collision sport, contact sport and non-contact sport athletes. The repetitive subconcussive head impacts associated with collision sport participation do not appear to negatively affect self-reported symptoms or neurocognitive functioning in current youth athletes.© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2022. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…