Objective To determine the normative, baseline performance and psychometric properties of the Child Sport Concussion Assessment Tool 3 (Child-SCAT3) in 5-13 year-old athletes. Design Cross-sectional study. Setting Practice filds. Participants Contact sport athletes (N = 155) 5-13 years old. Independent Variables Age, gender, verbal intellectual functioning (receptive vocabulary) Main Outcome Measures Child-SCAT3: self- and parent-reported symptoms, cognitive performance (child form of the standardized assessment of concussion; SAC-C), and balance (modified balance error scoring system, mBESS-C; tandem gait). A subset of the sample repeated the Child-SCAT3 at another date. Some subjects also completed the Adult-SCAT3 version of the symptom checklist and mBESS. Results Small to medium-sized effects of age were observed on all Child-SCAT3 components. Effects of gender and receptive vocabulary were observed on select components of the SCAT3. Younger age and lower receptive vocabulary were independently associated with greater symptom endorsement, yet parents rated higher symptom burden for older children. Internal consistency reliability and stability of symptom ratings was good to excellent. Stability was more modest for SAC-C and tandem gait scores and very poor for mBESS-C scores, perhaps due to restricted variance. Interrater reliability (self- versus parent-rated symptoms) was fair. Conclusions The Child-SCAT3 self-report symptom checklist may be inappropriate to administer to younger school-aged children. Some of the age effects observed warrant use of demographically-appropriate norms in Child-SCAT3 interpretation. The findings can provide guidance for clinicians assessing children of varying ages and point to directions for further development of refined approaches for pediatric concussion assessment.

There is a subset of patients with mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) who report persistent symptoms that impair their functioning and quality of life. Being able to predict which patients will experience prolonged symptom recovery would help clinicians target resources for clinical follow-up to those most in need, and would facilitate research to develop precision medicine treatments for mTBI. The purpose of this study was to investigate the predictors of symptom recovery in a prospective sample of emergency department trauma patients with either mTBI or non-mTBI injuries. Subjects were examined at several time points from within 72 h to 45 days post-injury. We quantified and compared the value of a variety of demographic, injury, and clinical assessment (symptom, neurocognitive) variables for predicting self-reported symptom duration in both mTBI (n = 89) and trauma control (n = 73) patients. Several injury-related and neuropsychological variables assessed acutely (< 72 h) post-injury predicted symptom duration, particularly loss of consciousness (mTBI group), acute somatic symptom burden (both groups), and acute reaction time (both groups), with reasonably good model fit when including all of these variables (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve [AUC] = 0.76). Incorporating self-reported litigation involvement modestly increased prediction further (AUC = 0.80). The results highlight the multifactorial nature of mTBI recovery, and injury recovery more generally, and the need to incorporate a variety of variables to achieve adequate prediction. Further research to improve this model and validate it in new and more diverse trauma samples will be useful to build a neurobiopsychosocial model of recovery that informs treatment development.

The CNTs evaluated, developed and widely used to assess sport-related concussion, did not yield significant differences between patients with mTBI versus other injuries. Symptom scores better differentiated groups than CNTs, with effect sizes weaker than those reported in sport-related concussion studies. Nonspecific injury factors, and other characteristics common in ED settings, likely affect CNT performance across trauma patients as a whole and thereby diminish the validity of CNTs for assessing mTBI in this patient population. (JINS, 2017, 23, 293-303).

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Aim Determine the frequency of factors that complicate identification of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) in emergency department (ED) patients. Setting Chart review. Materials & Methods Records of 3,042 patients (age 18-45) exposed to a potential mechanism of mTBI were reviewed for five common complicating factors and signs of mTBI. Results Most patients (65.1%) had at least one complicating factor: given narcotics in the ED (43.7%), on psychotropic medication (18.4%), psychiatric diagnosis (15.3%), alcohol consumption near time of admission (14.2%), and pre-admission narcotic prescription (8.9%). Conclusion Our findings highlight the frequency of these confounding factors in this population. Future research should identify how these factors interact with performance on assessment measures to improve evidence-based mTBI assessment in this population.