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Be careful not to rely on what adolescent athletes tell you about their recovery from concussions as the sole criterion for making return-to-play decisions, researchers from UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh warn sports medicine practitioners.

In findings published online in the inaugural issue of Applied Neuropsychology: Child, researchers found that young athletes neglect the more subtle symptoms — neuropsychiatric and sleep issues — and base their perceptions of their recovery primarily on physical (somatic) symptoms such as headache and nausea.

Results indicate that when athletes gauge their own readiness to return-to-play, their physical symptoms account for 56 percent of their self-assessment, whereas their performance on objective neurocognitive testing only accounts for 28 percent. While the statistical analyses revealed that they judged their recovery on somatic and cognitive symptoms almost twice as strongly as neurocognitive testing, the sleep and neuropsychiatric symptoms ranked ahead of their performance on the objective test data by only a few percentage points.

“Our findings suggest that young athletes may not perceive their cognitive deficits as well as they perceive their somatic symptoms,” said Anthony Kontos, Ph.D., assistant research director with the UPMC Center for Sports Medicine Concussion Program. “Therefore, it is important to assess their cognitive deficits using neurocognitive concussion tests and a comprehensive clinical evaluation.” [continue reading…]