QUALITY-OF-LIFE OUTCOMES AND ACADEMIC CONCERNS FOLLOWING PEDIATRIC CONCUSSION: INITIAL FINDINGS FROM THE PRISM CONCUSSION RIG

Background: Concussion is a complicated injury that affects many facets of life in children and adolescents. Neurocognitive and self-reported symptom outcomes are commonly used to understand post-concussion effects. The degree to which concussion affects quality-of-life (QoL) and school performance remains difficult to determine among this age group. Purposes and Hypotheses: Our first purpose was to compare QoL domains using the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) among concussed children to healthy children. We hypothesized that concussed children would report worse QoL than controls. Our second purpose was to identify school-related difficulties that children encounter post-concussion. We hypothesized that the majority of patients would report moderate-to-high academic concerns. Methods: We conducted a multi-site study of patients evaluated at pediatric sports medicine centers and healthy controls undergoing pre-participation physical examinations. All participants were less than 19 years of age and those with a concussion were evaluated