Head Injuries are the worst if not treated in the available time because then there are chances of Concussion or Post-concussion symptoms in them. Head injury risk seems more common in athletic people due to their rigorous movement and sports activity that might cause any damage the head.
But a present study says that it is not just the head injury responsible for showing post-concussion syndrome signs. An already prevailing stress, lack of sleep, and any pre-existing mental health condition could also mimic the symptoms very similar to a concussion. There might be severe side-effects to it.
Sometimes people experience life experiences that seem similar to concussion-like signs that involve headaches, inability to concentrate correctly, often feeling tired or dizzy, etc. It is not necessarily true that head injury can only cause a concussion, as concussion has no specific type of occurrence. There, there requires a more precise concussion diagnosing tool.
In the new study conducted to analyze the post-concussion syndrome, it was observed that amongst ‘11% and 27% of college athletes’ who had no history of recent concussion or head injury reported post-concussion like syndrome.
The researchers predicted that there would be only three factors that would have been affecting and showing results similar to concussion; stress, lack of sleep, and any existing mental health problems. Researchers from the Concussion Assessment, Research, and Education (CARE) Consortium who conducted this assessment on College Athletes and NCAA cadets reported that particular pain would help a physician quickly diagnose concussion in the head.
But what would be difficult for a physician to understand or evaluate would be what symptoms are being caused by concussion and what is not in any person.
The Research & Its Findings
The research’s main aim focused on finding out the concussion effect and how long it takes to recover from it in students from Universities who are athletes, NCAA cadets, and students from military service academies in the US.
However, the lead author study and an assistant professor at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, Dr. Jaclyn Caccese, told one of the sources, Verywell Health, that it is best that a physician while testing to diagnose the signs of post-concussion syndrome must consider all possibilities.
Whether there was any head injury involved or a medical history of mental health issues, stress, and sleep pattern, Both situations will influence a person/athlete’s concussion symptom. The research participants were asked to take a survey to understand better and bring out a treatment for recovery of concussion effects.
Over 12,000 military service academy cadets and 18,548 NCAA student-athletes responded to the Sport Concussion Assessment Tool, third edition (SCAT3), which helps medical professionals diagnose concussion through screening for memory, balance, delayed recall, among other concussion symptoms. Demographic and family medical history data were also collected.
~ Verywell Health
After analyzing these athletes’ and cadets’ medical history reports to check if anything pre-concussion was affecting post-concussion in them, the conclusion came out that 17.8% of male cadets and 27.6% of female cadets had reported no recent concussion. In comparison, 11.4% of male student-athletes and 20% of female student-athletes showed and reported Post-Concussion syndrome symptoms.
The lead author of the study Dr. Cacesse said that this data on medical history and survey could very clearly show which individual will report on PCS symptoms without experiencing any recent concussion event and who will not. Dr. Cacesse then mentioned that both of these cadet groups in the research had a history of migraine, stress, sleeping problems, etc., which might have begun to act as post-concussion-like symptoms.
The Conclusion
All the research findings conclude that a physician who is trying to get to the diagnosis of any athlete or person reporting on symptoms similar to a concussion requires a specific diagnostic tool.
It is not just the tool to diagnose but many factors that must be considered for saving themselves from misdiagnosis. The factors like the person’s medical history and how long they experienced a head injury would all be essential. What would lead to misdiagnosis is asking the patient to self-report on the symptoms and evaluating the concussion long after the injury event took place.
Joining the dots won’t give accurate results. Hence, it entirely depends on the tests conducted by a clinician to evaluate the results. The sort and long term effects of any injury would represent the concussion symptoms. Reports on signs are the best thing in the case, but the proper diagnosis would require much more tests and additional information.
Some symptoms might help the doctor in routing towards a specific direction on concussion diagnosis, such as; blurry vision, dizziness, nausea, light or noise issue, confusion, inability to concentrate, feeling foggy, etc. After all, a concussion could be mimicked by many conditions due to its non-specificity.
