Evaluating Motor Control Improves Discrimination of Adolescents with and without Sports Related Concussion

Abstract

Disrupted motor performance is increasingly recognized as a critical sequela of concussion which may have relevance for diagnosis and treatment. In 17 adolescents with recent concussion and 20 never-concussed controls, we evaluated the discriminant ability of a commonly used neurocognitive measure compared to a motor subtle sign exam, which evaluates gait, balance, and fine and gross motor control. We found that the motor subtle sign exam had better discriminant ability than the neurocognitive measure, but combining both measures was superior to analyses with individual measures (Wilks’ ƛ = .297, p < .001). This supports that there is an added benefit of evaluating motor control along with neurocognitive capacities after suspected concussion to enhance diagnosis and treatment of injury.

Keywords:

• Discriminant analysis
• ImPACT®
• motor control
• physical and neurological examination of subtle signs
• sports-related concussion

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health under grant number 5T32HD007414 (to author J.S.) and under grant number R21HD080378 (to author S.S.)