29/11/2023
As football pre-season starts to kick off, we want to bring some attention to the best-practice process for returning to sport following a concussion (or suspected concussion). Returning an athlete to sport following concussion should be a collaborative process between the athlete, their healthcare team and coaches.
The entire process depends first on a thorough assessment post-injury to determine the presence of any problems across a wide range of physical and cognitive domains including balance, coordination, memory, mood, range of motion, and symptoms such as headache, dizziness, nausea and fatigue. At Cervus, these assessments typically take 60-90 minutes, and - in our humble opinion - any athlete receiving a concussion assessment taking less than an hour should be suspicious that theyāre in the wrong place. Weāll detail this in another post soon.
The above process outlines the basic strategy for returning an athlete to their normal activity in a way which minimises the risk of re-injury or secondary impact syndrome from another head injury before proper recovery. At a minimum this process is at least week long, however our experience is that most athletes take more time than this. Every head injury is different and factors such as athlete health, the nature of the injury, history of previous injuries and medical conditions can add or subtract time to the recovery process.
At Cervus we include objective computerised balance tracking assessment to help in our assessment of when an athleteās brain is ready to progress to the next level of their program. More on that soon, too.
Feel free to put any questions below and weāll do our best to answer them.