After an athlete has suffered a concussion, it's very important that they wait until the injury has fully healed before returning to the playing field. A new headset is designed to let them know when it's safe to do so, by monitoring their "headpulse."
Currently, the most common method of gauging concussion recovery involves monitoring obvious physical symptoms such as headaches and dizziness.
According to scientists at the University of California - San Francisco, however, some brain damage may still persist after those symptoms have abated. If an athlete does start playing again before that damage has healed, they risk subsequent, more serious brain injuries.
Led by doctors Cathra Halabi and Wade S. Smith, the researchers looked to a phenomenon known as "headpulse" as a more accurate indicator. In a nutshell, headpulse is the subtle force exerted on the inside of the skull each time the heart contracts and pumps out blood.
The team created a headset that measures headpulse via accelerometers which detect the micro-movements of the head that occur with each pulse – the device does so during a daily 90-second testing session. It was trialed on a group of adolescent Australian Rules Football players, 43 of whom had recently suffered a concussion, and 59 of whom had not.
After a one-month testing period, it was found that not only did the concussed players have a distinctive headpulse pattern which the uninjured players did not, but that pattern persisted for an average of 12 days after their other symptoms had disappeared.
"We found a mismatch between symptoms and changes in biometrics recorded by the device," said Halabi. "This raises concern about relying on symptoms for return-to-play decisions. Delays could be recommended for those symptom-free athletes if headpulse abnormalities persist."
The device is now being commercialized by medical technology company MindRhythm. A paper on the research was recently published in the journal JAMA Network Open.
Sources: University of California - San Francisco via EurekAlert, MindRhythm
