Study: Sports-related concussions can impact academic performance, especially in high school

HIGH-SCHOOL-FOOTBALL-FIELD

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Con­cus­sions Are Hav­ing An Alarm­ing Impact On The Aca­d­e­mics Of Stu­dents (Reuters):

Stud­ies in the last five years have focused large­ly on the ath­let­ic side of the equa­tion — “tak­ing them off the field, not putting them back on the field with symp­toms, but this is real­ly look­ing at the stu­dent side of the equa­tion,” said senior author Ger­ard A. Gioia of Chil­dren’s Nation­al Health Sys­tem in Rockville, Maryland.

Almost 60 per­cent of kids with symp­toms, and 64 per­cent of their par­ents, said they were mod­er­ate­ly or very con­cerned about the con­cus­sion affect­ing school learn­ing and per­for­mance, com­pared to 16 per­cent of recov­ered kids and 30 per­cent of their parents.

More than half of symp­to­matic kids said they were now spend­ing more time on home­work, com­pared to one-fifth of those with­out symp­toms. They also report­ed more dif­fi­cul­ty study­ing and tak­ing class notes.

School sys­tems need to be pre­pared to accept and sup­port these kids head­ing back into class­rooms before full recov­ery,” which requires col­lab­o­ra­tion between med­ical pro­fes­sion­als and school staff, he said.

Study: Aca­d­e­m­ic Effects of Con­cus­sion in Chil­dren and Ado­les­cents (Pedi­atrics). From the abstract:

  • METHOD: A sam­ple of 349 stu­dents ages 5 to 18 who sus­tained a con­cus­sion and their par­ents report­ed aca­d­e­m­ic con­cerns and prob­lems (eg, symp­toms inter­fer­ing, dimin­ished aca­d­e­m­ic skills) on a struc­tured school ques­tion­naire with­in 4 weeks of injury. Post­con­cus­sion symp­toms were mea­sured as a mark­er of injury sever­i­ty. Results were exam­ined based on recov­ery sta­tus (recov­ered or active­ly symp­to­matic) and lev­el of school­ing (ele­men­tary, mid­dle, and high school).
  • RESULTS: …High school stu­dents who had not yet recov­ered report­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly more adverse aca­d­e­m­ic effects than their younger coun­ter­parts. Greater sever­i­ty of post­con­cus­sion symp­toms was asso­ci­at­ed with more school-relat­ed prob­lems and worse aca­d­e­m­ic effects, regard­less of time since injury.
  • CONCLUSIONS: This study pro­vides ini­tial evi­dence for a concussion’s impact on aca­d­e­m­ic learn­ing and per­for­mance, with more adverse effects report­ed by stu­dents who had not yet recov­ered from the injury. School-based man­age­ment with tar­get­ed rec­om­men­da­tions informed by postin­jury symp­toms may mit­i­gate adverse aca­d­e­m­ic effects, reduce par­ent and stu­dent con­cerns for the impact of the injury on learn­ing and scholas­tic per­for­mance, and low­er the risk of pro­longed recov­ery for stu­dents with active post­con­cus­sion symptoms.

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