Symptom profiles and postural control after concussion in female artistic athletes

Abstract

ABSTRACT Objectives The purpose of our investigation was to compare post-concussion symptom profiles and postural control measures among female youth artistic athletes (gymnasts and cheerleaders) relative to female ball sport athletes (volleyball or basketball). Methods/Findings We compared 27 artistic athletes (median age = 15.0 years; evaluated median = 13 days post-injury) and 49 ball sport athletes (median age = 15.3 years; evaluated median = 10 days post-injury) within 21 days of sustaining a concussion on measures of symptom profiles and postural control (Balance Error Scoring System [BESS]), tandem gait, and Romberg tests. After adjusting for the independent effect of time from injury-evaluation, concussion history, and pre-morbid migraine history, we observed that artistic athletes performed the BESS tandem stance foam condition with fewer errors than ball sport athletes (β = −2.4; 95% CI = −4.7, −0.2; p = .03). Artistic athletes demonstrated a higher, yet not statistically significant, headache severity than ball sport athletes (median = 4.5 vs 4.0, p = .07). Conclusions Overall, artistic athletes had similar symptom profiles to ball sport athletes. Postural control measures, other than the BESS tandem stance foam condition, were not significantly different from ball sport athletes. This suggests that although their sports may require higher levels of balance, artistic athletes’ performance on post-concussion balance tests may be similar to athletes of other disciplines.