• Bunker, N.
• Guercio, H.
• Trbovich, A. M.
• French, J. E.
• Collins, M. W.
• Perry, C.
• Kontos, A. P.
• Zynda, A. J.
• Patel, S.
• Burley, C.

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:sec><jats:title>Purpose</jats:title><jats:p>To examine differences in demographics, medical history, injury characteristics, and multidomain clinical assessment outcomes between different age groups of older adults following concussion.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Method</jats:title><jats:p>This prospective study included participants aged 50+ years with a diagnosed concussion (&amp;lt;12 months) who presented to a specialty concussion clinic. Participants completed a clinical intake/interview (e.g., demographics) and a multidomain clinical assessment comprising symptoms (Clinical Profile Screen [CP-Screen]), cognitive (Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status [RBANS]), psychological health (Patient Health Questionnaire-9 [PHQ-9], Generalized Anxiety Disoder-7 [GAD-7]), vestibular/ocular (Vestibular/Ocular Motor Screen [VOMS]), and quality of life (Neurological Quality of Life [Neuro-QoL]) at an initial visit. Older adults aged 50–59 and 60+ years were compared using independent samples t-tests, X2 tests, and analyses of covariance.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Results</jats:title><jats:p>76 participants (M = 59.6¬ ± 6.3 years, 55.3% female) were included, 41 (53.9%) aged 50–59 and 35 (46.1%) aged 60+ years. The 50–59-year group had a greater proportion of females (68.3% vs. 40.0%, p = 0.01) and a history of anxiety (39.0% vs. 17.1%, p = 0.036). The 50–59-year group had worse Neuro-QoL (F[1, 72] = 5.1, p = 0.03, ηp2 = 0.10), RBANS recall (F[1, 72] = 7.1, p &amp;lt; 0.01, ηp2 = 0.09), RBANS fluency (F[1, 72] = 5.0, p = 0.03, ηp2 = 0.06), and RBANS list recognition (F[1, 72] = 4.1, p = 0.04, ηp2 = 0.06), controlling for sex and history of anxiety.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Conclusions</jats:title><jats:p>This study demonstrated that adults aged 50–59 years were more likely to be female and have a history of anxiety compared to adults 60+ years. Interestingly, older adults 50–59 years demonstrated greater perceived difficulties in their cognitive abilities post-concussion, which was reflected in impairments on cognitive testing compared to adults 60+ years.</jats:p></jats:sec>

Topics

• size-exclusion chromatography