A brief, standardized physical exam for sport-related concussive brain injuries in children and adolescents can identify who’s at risk for persistent post-concussion symptoms.

The Buffalo Concussion Physical Examination’s Risk of Delayed Recovery (RDR) score is the first decision rule to help clinicians who aren’t concussion specialists quickly identify which children are at risk for persistent post-concussion symptoms (PPCS) within 10 days of injury and should be referred to a specialist for focused treatment.

A decision rule is an evidence-based tool that helps clinicians make diagnostic and therapeutic decisions.

As reported in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, the decision rule proved to be highly accurate, correctly identifying who would go on to develop PPCS in 85% of cases.

“The Buffalo Concussion Physical Exam takes less than 10 minutes to do and uses physician exam techniques that every clinician already has,” says first author M. Nadir Haider, assistant director of research in the Concussion Management Clinic in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at University at Buffalo and UBMD Orthopedics and Sports Medicine.

To promote the adoption of the Buffalo Concussion Physical Exam, Haider plans next to develop an app that can generate the RDR score identifying children who will experience delayed concussion recovery based on the findings from the exam.

Read the full article about identifying delayed concussion recovery by Ellen Goldbaum at Futurity.