Medical experts have devised an easy, two-minute vision test that can determine if an athlete has sustained a concussion — one that can be made on the sidelines after a blow to the head.
A study of the test, published in the Journal of Neuro-Ophthalmology, found it can effectively be delivered in athletes as young as 5 years old to determine if a player can return to the field of play or should be referred for treatment.
For the study, researchers tracked nearly 350 athletes participating in youth ice hockey and lacrosse leagues, as well as collegiate athletes from New York University and Long Island University. The investigators noted sports-related concussions commonly affect vision, but current sideline tests only examine cognition and balance — not of visual performance.
“We investigated how adding a vision-based test of rapid number naming could increase our ability to identify concussed athletes on the sideline at youth and collegiate levels,” the researchers wrote.
The results showed the vision test showed the “greatest capacity” to distinguish athletes with concussions from those without serious head injuries, the researchers concluded.
“Adding a vision-based performance measure to cognitive and balance testing enhances the detection capabilities of current sideline concussion assessment,” they added. “This observation in patients with mild traumatic brain injury reflects the common involvement and widespread distribution of brain pathways dedicated to vision.”
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