A - 31 Do Physical, Mood, and Cognitive Symptoms Improve at Different Times Following Sport-Related Concussion?

Abstract Purpose To evaluate differences in physical, mood, and cognitive symptom improvement over multiple clinic visits following concussion. Method Patients (ages 13–25 yrs) seeking specialty care for a sport-related concussion at approximately 8.62 days following injury (SD = 7.08) completed a clinical symptom assessment evaluating the presence or absence (yes/no) of nine physical (e.g., headache, dizziness, nausea), five mood (e.g., irritability, nervousness), and four cognitive (e.g., fogginess, memory challenges) symptoms. Clinical symptoms were assessed again at the second (M = 18.14, SD = 9.53) and third (M = 31.65, SD = 12.38) clinical visits. A percentage of endorsed symptoms out of the total for each domain was used as an outcome. A repeated measures ANOVA examined the interaction between symptom domain (physical, cognitive, mood) and clinical visit (first, second, third) on symptom scores. Results Eighty patients (M = 16.07, SD = 2.84 yrs, 76% female) participated in the study. The symptom domain x clinical visit interaction was significant (Wilks λ = 0.88, F [4, 76] = 2.63, p = 0.04, η2 = 0.12). Percentage of endorsed physical and cognitive symptoms were significantly higher than mood symptoms at the first clinical visit (p < 0.001). At the second clinical visit, physical symptoms were significantly higher than both cognitive and mood symptoms (p < 0.001) and cognitive symptoms were significantly higher than mood symptoms (p = 0.05). At the third clinical visit, physical and cognitive symptoms were similar (p = 0.11), but both symptom domains were significantly higher than mood symptoms (p < 0.001). Conclusions Physical and cognitive symptoms comprise most of the symptom burden throughout concussion recovery; however, all symptoms improve over time and there is no discernable pattern across symptom domains.