Recovery Timeline of Concussion – Redefined!

Recovery timeline of concussion may be redefined to 28 days, as per a largest study ever conducted in college athletes – The Natural History of Sport-Related Concussion in Collegiate Athletes: Findings from the NCAA-DoD CARE Consortium, at the University Of Michigan, published in the journal Sports Medicine. Earlier the recovery period of concussion was reported to be up to 14 days. However present study indicates that normal concussion recovery could take up to a month.

The present study was conducted on 34,709 male and female athletes from 30 colleges and universities. And more than 1,700 of the participants were concussed while participating in 22 sports.

Recovery Period and Concussion

"Normal return-to-play time was previously set at 14 days––meaning 50% of people recovered in that time. Our paper suggests that 28 days more fully encapsulates the recovery process. At that point, 85% of people have returned to play," says the study's lead researcher, Steve Broglio, director of the University of Michigan Concussion Center, and part of the CARE Consortium leadership team.

The athletes’ returns to play (RTP) protocols are generally driven by their symptoms, and not rather the time. Hence the study states that the finding doesn’t demand the universities to revise their return to play protocols; but rather reframe their expectations for return to play.

This would help evade disgracing concussed athletes who take longer than 14 days to recover. Moreover, the greater recovery period was noted mainly among those with initial post-injury symptom severity, practice/training-related injuries, and three or more prior concussions.

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"Back when I started in concussion research 20 years ago, we'd manage these injuries with a light switch. We'd ask, 'Do you have symptoms?' and if the answer was no, the athlete was put back on the field. Gone are the days when concussed athletes are put back in the same day. Now, we can think of it as a dial, where we slowly progress people back into the sport. Once a player is asymptomatic, it can still take some time. We have to respect the injury and respect the recovery process," says, Broglio.

Source-Medindia