83 Heart rate recovery changes following repetitive head impacts in Canadian football athletes

Purpose To compare simulated driving performance between individuals with persisting symptoms after concussion (PSaC) and non-concussed controls.Methods Cross-sectional study.Twenty-seven individuals with PSaC (18.4 2.3 years, 66.7% Female, 67.7 46.4 days since injury, total symptom severity score: 20.5 16.4) and 27 non-concussed controls (18.3 2.2 years, 55.6% Female, total symptom severity score: 2.0 3.8) completed a 6-mile simulated driving task.Driving outcomes included the total number of collisions, speed exceedances, stop signs missed, centerline crossings, and road edge excursions.We used separate generalized linear models to compare each driving outcome between groups, with days since concussion included as a covariate.A Poisson distribution was used with a<.05.Results The PSaC group demonstrated 1.26 times more speed exceedances (p=.003,Incidence Rate Ratio, IRR: 1.26, 95% CI: 1.08-1.47,figure 1A) and 1.47 times more road edge excursions (p=.038,IRR: 1.47, 95%CI: 1.02-2.11,figure 1B) compared to the control group.No significant group differences were observed for other driving outcomes (all p>.05).A. Speed Exceedances B. Road Edge Excursions Conclusion Individuals with PSaC demonstrated poorer vehicle control, which is associated with increased risk for motor vehicle crash.These findings suggest the need for considering driving safety in individuals with PSaC.Given that patients with PSaC were assessed later in the concussion recovery process, our findings suggest that poorer post-concussion driving performance could be more closely related to the postconcussion deficits in those with PSaC rather than time since injury.This highlights the need for individualized post-concussion driving recommendations in individuals with PSaC.Abstract 82 Figure 1 Number of A) speed exceedances and B) road edge excursions between concussion (red) and control groups (blue).The red/ blue dotted line is the median and the black dot lines are the lower and upper quartiles Abstracts