Abstract

Many patients that experience a concussion have impairing symptoms that persist beyond typical recovery timeframes. Concussion symptoms often remit within a month, but persisting impairments are difficult to characterize and attribute to concussion given the poorly defined diagnostic criteria of post-concussion syndrome and inadequate understanding of the cognitive symptoms associated with this condition. The current study aims to clarify the cognitive profiles of school-aged concussion patients (n = 21; N = 36; 64% male) that have persisting symptoms to improve the clinical identification methods for this condition. Logistic regression was used to explore the importance of cognitive processing speed and working memory for identifying patients with persisting concussion symptoms (PCS). Additional exploratory analyses were conducted to clarify cognitive domains that may be impacted by having PCS. Findings indicate processing speed and working memory abilities alone are not adequate to identify patients with PCS. Further, measures of processing speed, fluid reasoning, working memory, and long-term retrieval together were found to be necessary to identify those who had a prior concussion with PCS. These findings indicate clinical neuropsychological batteries must include measures of these four cognitive domains when assessing school-aged patients with chronic symptoms that extend beyond three months following injury.

摘要

许多经历过脑震荡的患者会出现持续超过典型恢复时间的受损症状。脑震荡症状通常会在一个月内缓解，但鉴于脑震荡后综合征的诊断标准定义不明确以及对与这种情况相关的认知症状了解不足，因此难以表征和归因于脑震荡的持续性损伤。本研究旨在阐明学龄脑震荡患者的认知特征（n  = 21；N = 36; 64% 男性）有持续症状以改进针对这种情况的临床识别方法。逻辑回归用于探索认知处理速度和工作记忆对于识别持续性脑震荡症状 (PCS) 患者的重要性。进行了额外的探索性分析，以阐明可能受到 PCS 影响的认知领域。研究结果表明，仅靠处理速度和工作记忆能力不足以识别 PCS 患者。此外，还发现处理速度、流体推理、工作记忆和长期检索的测量对于识别那些先前患有 PCS 脑震荡的人是必要的。