Comparing The Discriminative Ability Of The Vestibular/ocular Motor Screening Tool And Senaptec Sensory Station In Identifying Concussion In College-aged Individuals

Emerging tools, such as the Senaptec Sensory Station (Senaptec), known for simultaneously measuring visual and sensorimotor skills, are being explored for concussion assessment. The reliability of this tool has been established, but its discriminative ability following concussion compared to widely accepted and valid assessments, like the Vestibular/Ocular-Motor Screening (VOMS) tool, remains unknown. The purpose of this study was to determine the discriminative ability of VOMS item scores and Senaptec scores for identifying college-aged individuals with a concussion from healthy controls. College-aged individuals (18-30 years) within 5 days of a concussion and healthy controls matched on age and biological sex completed the VOMS and Senaptec battery. A series of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves with area under the curve (AUC) were used to determine the ability of VOMS and Senaptec to identify college-aged individuals with concussion from controls. Seventy concussions (29 male, μ age=21.3+2.6 years) and 34 healthy controls (17 male, μ age=21.7+2.9 years) were included. Individual and overall VOMS items significantly identified concussions from controls (Table 1). Senaptec Near-Far Quickness (AUC=0.67, p<0.01), Eye-Hand Coordination (AUC=0.70, p<0.001), Go/No-Go (AUC=0.68, p=0.001), and Reaction Time (AUC = 0.710, p<0.001) tests significantly identified concussion from control as well. Compared to the excellent and outstanding discriminative ability of VOMS components, only Eye-Hand Coordination and Reaction Time tests from Senaptec demonstrated acceptable discriminative ability in identifying concussions from controls. Our results indicate VOMS scores are useful in identifying concussions in college-aged individuals within 5 days of injury, while only 2 of 10 Senaptec tests are useful. VOMS remains a recommended tool for clinicians, yet caution is advised when using Senaptec for concussion assessment in this population. Table 1. - Receiver Operating Characteristic AUCs for Identification of Concussion Versus Healthy Controlsa AUC 95% CI p Value Vestibular/Ocular Motor Screening (VOMS) Smooth pursuit 0.912 0.857-0.967 <.001b Horizontal saccade 0.884 0.819-0.948 <.001b Vertical saccade 0.887 0.818-0.956 <.001b Near point of convergence 0.926 0.876-0.976 <.001b Near point of convergence, cm 0.625 0.511-0.738 .031b VOR: horizontal 0.899 0.834-0.964 <.001b VOR: vertical 0.897 0.834-0.961 <.001b Visual-motion sensitivity 0.874 0.806-0.943 <.001b VOMS overall 0.910 0.851-0.969 <.001b Senaptec Sensory Station Visual Clarity 0.487 0.363-0.610 .836 Contrast Sensitivity 0.503 0.382-0.623 .965 Depth Perception 0.468 0.351-0.584 .586 Near-Far Quickness 0.667 0.550-0.784 .005b Perception Span 0.487 0.374-0.600 .824 Multiple-Object Tracking 0.531 0.417-0.645 .590 Reaction Time 0.710 0.610-0.810 <.001b Target Capture 0.574 0.445-0.703 .262 Eye-Hand Coordination 0.700 0.600-0.799 <.001b Go/No-Go 0.675 0.570-0.780 .001b