Performance during dual-task walking in a corridor after mild traumatic brain injury: A potential functional marker to assist return-to-function decisions

ABSTRACT

Objective: To compare the performance of participants with mTBI and healthy control on locomotor-cognitive dual-tasks in a corridor with limited technology.

Design: Prospective study of twenty participants with mTBI (10 women; 22.10 ± 2.97 years; 70.9 ± 22.31 days post-injury), and 20 sex- and age-matched control participants (10 women; 22.55 ± 2.72 years).

Methods: Participants performed six different dual-tasks combining locomotor tasks (level-walking, obstacle-crossing, and tandem gait) and cognitive tasks (counting backwards and verbal fluency). Symptoms and neuropsychological performance were also assessed.

Results: No differences between groups were found for symptoms and neuropsychological measures. For gait speed, the group effect was not significant, but a significant group X cognitive task interaction was found, revealing a tendency toward slower gait speed in the mTBI group during dual-task conditions. A significantly greater dual-task cost for gait speed was found for the mTBI group. Although no statistically significant differences in cognitive performance were observed during dual-tasks, the mTBI group subjectively reported being significantly less concentrated.

Conclusion: The present study revealed that in persons who seem to have well recovered after mTBI, on average 71 days post-injury, alterations in gait are detectable using a simple, “low-tech,” corridor-based dual-task walking assessment.

KEYWORDS:

• Concussion
• locomotion
• gait speed
• cognition

Acknowledgments

We want to thank Caroline Charette, Félix Fiset, and Frédéric St-Onge for their contribution to data collection, and Jean Leblond for advice on the statistics. This work was supported by a doctoral scholarship from the Fonds de Recherche du Québec-Santé awarded to M-E Gagné along with partial support from a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada awarded (NSERC-191782-2012) to B. McFadyen and a grant from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (Grant #127052).

Declaration of interests statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a doctoral award received by M-E Gagné from the Fonds de Recherche du Québec-Santé, and by grants awarded to B.J. McFadyen by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (Grant #127052) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada [NSERC-191782-2012].