Concussion Recovery – What’s a normal length of time to recover from brain injury?

September 23, 2021, Kitchener, Ontario

Posted by: Robert Deutschmann, Personal Injury Lawyer

Concussion and TBI are common brain injuries that we handle at Deutschmann Personal Injury and Disability Law. They happen as a result of slip and falls accidents, car accidents, sporting accidents and even workplace accidents. Concussions can be extremely serious and symptoms can take a long time to resolve. Some people have symptoms for months or even years. Others have symptoms that resolve in days or weeks. There is now a growing body of research linking even one concussion to the development of degenerative brain diseases later in life.

A common question from victims is, “How long will my symptoms last?”. This is a question that medical professionals can’t yet answer. It seems the length of time symptoms are suffered varies from person to person even when they have similar injuries.

A new study released from the University of Michigan has concluded that a normal recovery can take up to a month. The study is the largest of its kind studying college athletes and was evaluating current return-to-play protocols.

You can read the news release published in Newswire at the end of this article.

Common symptoms of concussion include:

• Ringing of ears
• Sensitivity to light and noise
• Loss of consciousness
• Disruption of sleep
• Change in mood
• Loss of memory
• Loss of fine motor skills
•  

If you have suffered a concussion due to an accident caused by someone else’s negligence you should contact one of our highly experienced personal injury lawyers today. Call or fill out our online contact form and we will sit down with you for a free intial consultation on your case.

Newswise — Largest study of concussion ever conducted in college athletes is redefining the timeline for recovery as a process taking up to 28 days, up from the suggested normal recovery time of up to 14 days. 

The findings are detailed in the journal Sports Medicine, in one of the marquee papers to emerge from the NCAA-DoD Concussion Assessment, Research and Education Consortium. The study's lead researcher, Steve Broglio, director of the University of Michigan Concussion Center, is on the CARE Consortium leadership team and leads the CARE clinical study core. 

"Normal return-to-play time was previously set at 14 days––meaning 50% of people recovered in that time. Our paper suggests that 28 days more fully encapsulates the recovery process. At that point, 85% of people have returned to play," Broglio said.

The study found that though median recovery times were consistent with the previously suggested 14 days, it was not until one month post-injury that most athletes were cleared for unrestricted sport participation. 

This doesn't mean that universities must revise their return to play protocols.  

"The RTP protocols are driven by clinical presentation (symptoms), not time, so they don't need to be revised," Broglio said.  

Rather, coaches, parents and athletes should reframe their expectations for return to

play, in part to avoid stigmatizing concussed athletes who take longer than 14 days to recover, he said.  Reframing the normal recovery time to 28 days helps eliminate unintentional social pressure from teammates, coaches or parents who hope to see their player back on the field. If a concussed athlete takes longer than 14 days or up to a month, that's completely normal, he said.

There wasn't much variation in recovery times among study subgroups, with various factors altering recovery by only up to two days. The total return-to-play duration was shorter with ADHD medication usage, males and greater assessment frequency. Those with greater initial post-injury symptom severity, practice/training-related injuries and three or more prior concussions had longer recoveries. 

Concussion management recommendations are outlined every four years by the Concussion in Sport Group, an international body that reviews the medical literature and develops guidelines on clinical care. This paper and others resulting from the CARE Consortium will likely be taken into consideration when the group meets next year, said Broglio, who is also a member of CISG.

Despite increased research in concussion over the previous decade, the trajectory of concussion recovery times across diverse populations of athletes has remained poorly defined, because most sport concussion research centered on male athletes in collision sports, or on female soccer players, Broglio said. 

The current study included 34,709 male and female athletes from 30 colleges and universities—more than 1,700 of whom were concussed while participating in 22 sports. 

Concussed male athletes most commonly played football (54.7%), soccer (10.7%), basketball (6.8%) and wrestling (6.4%), while concussed female athletes most commonly played soccer (23.4%), volleyball (14%), basketball (12.9%) and lacrosse (8.4%). Broglio said male and female athletes took about the same amount of time to recover from concussion, give or take a day. 

Concussion education and treatment has improved dramatically in the last two decades, he said.

"Back when I started in concussion research 20 years ago, we'd manage these

injuries with a light switch. We'd ask, 'Do you have symptoms?' and if the answer was no, the athlete was put back on the field. Gone are the days when concussed athletes are put back in the same day," Broglio said. "Now, we can think of it as a dial, where we

slowly progress people back into the sport. Once a player is asymptomatic, it can still take some time. We have to respect the injury and respect the recovery process."

Co-authors include: Thomas McAllister, Barry Katz, Michelle LaPradd and Wenxian Zhou of Indiana University; Michael McCrea of the Medical College of Wisconsin; and CARE Consortium investigators. 

About Deutschmann Law

Deutschmann Law serves South-Western Ontario with offices in Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge, Woodstock, Brantford, Stratford and Ayr. The law practice of Robert Deutschmann focuses almost exclusively in personal injury and disability insurance matters. For more information, please visit www.deutschmannlaw.com or call us at 1-519-742-7774.

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