Overview

Concussion Vital Signs is offered at no cost to any school in the United States.

All sports carry the potential for injury. For student athletes' developing brains, the risk of concussion may be the greatest risk of all. Each year many athletes suffer injuries that may lead to chronic difficulties in the everyday activities of learning, remembering, concentrating, and solving problems.

Concussion Vital Signs, when used as the neurocogntive testing component of an overall concussion testing protocol, is designed for student athletes and aligns to current sports concussion management guidelines. This scientifically based system, used as part of a baseline protocol and as needed for post-injury evaluations helps facilitate the evaluation of athletes that may have suffered a concussion.

In addition, health care providers doing post-injury evaluations for schools using the Concussion Vital Signs system will be able to perform Post Injury testing at no cost when using the school account.

Concussion Vital Signs is a web-based solution designed to take 25-30 minutes of testing. All reports are available immediately after testing and are archived in the testing account.

Concussion Vital Signs Advantage

Clinical Portal

At no cost, clinicians can test, manage and coordinate care for multiple patients from any number of schools who are using Concussion Vital Signs for their concussion management platform.

For example, if any athlete needs to have post injury testing in the physician office, you need only go to Concussion Vital Signs web page and enter the "Concussion Reference Code" (found in the header of any previous report for that athlete), in the Clinical Portal, follow the prompts and you can test the athlete there and get a report. Also keep in mind that every report has a graphical report of scores from all previous testing so each report displays an archive of previous tests. This saves time for clinicians as they do not have to log in to a system to view past testing history. This controls cost in two ways. Clinicians will not have to buy a separate concussion management system and will not have to spend time looking up reports in a computer system.

So in summary, each report has a history of scores attached and post injury testing can be administered at the office at no cost once you enter the "Concussion Reference Code" in the Clinical Portal. So both schools and the supporting clinics test at no cost when using Concussion Vital Signs.

Valid and Reliable

The Concussion Vital Signs battery is based off the CNS Vital Signs platform. CNS Vital Signs (www.cnsvs.com) has provided cognitive and neurobehavioral testing for neurologists, neuropsychologist, psychiatrist and other health care providers since 2004. Visit the publications page for a listing of scientific literature, posters and presentations.

Being a subset of CNS Vital Signs, Concussion Vital Signs is comprised of seven well known, standardized neuropsychological tests. Concussion Vital Signs incorporates norms for individuals' ages 10-25 years old. Concussion Vital Signs provides easy-to-understand information on key cognitive measures, such as memory, reaction time, and executive function, attention and motor speed. Clinicians wanting to do test on groups older than 25 should consider using the CNS Vital Signs test platform.

Easy to Interpret Report

There are two types of reports available on the system. One of course, is the Baseline report. The second is the Post Injury report. Each report, both Baseline and Post Injury, raw scores for each tests as well as an indication as to whether the test was a valid effort (see below). In addition, where the athlete scores compared to age matched peers is described on the report. The Post Injury report will report the Baseline scores along current scores and whether or not current Post-Injury scores for the athlete returned to baseline, or is within 5% of baseline. The Post Injury report will produce graphs of all scores to date such that you have a longitudinal view of the testing performance, for all testing to date. The report can be part of a patient chart and the PDF format typically can be uploaded to EMRs.

Below you will find three sample neurocognitive clinical reports (1) a complete baseline report (2) neurocognitive baseline report (3) and a post-injury report; and the auto-scored results of a concussion symptom scale report and the results of the athlete-reported concussion history report.

Concussion Vital Signs Complete Baseline Report

Concussion Vital Signs Neurocognitive Baseline Report

Concussion Vital Signs Baseline Symptom Scale

Concussion Vital Signs Athlete Information & Medical History

Concussion Vital Signs Post-Injury Neurocognitive Test & Symptom Scale Report

Validity Indicators

Concussion Vital Signs auto-scored validity indicators, indicated in the column VALID SCORE on the report, tell you at a glance if the athlete's performance or effort was adequate on each domain area, so you quickly know whether you can rely on the results or need to re-administer the test. The validity indicators are algorithms derived from analysis of thousands of test session and reflect scores that are statistically suggestive of not putting forth appropriate effort during testing.

Part of the easy to read report includes "VALID SCORE". Should an athlete register "No" rather than "Yes" in the Validity Indicator section of the report, you should consider retesting the athlete until they obtain "Yes" in the Validity Indicator section of the report. It is important the athletes do their best and the Validity Indicators help identify those that might not be trying their best.

Rostering

Concussion Vital Signs allows you to maintain rosters by sport. Also the system allows you to "retire" athletes and take them out of the current view but be able to retrieve their information should they need to be active in the system as well as the roster.

Components of Concussion Vital Signs

• Neurocognitive Testing with Concussion Vital Signs
• Medical History Forms
• Concussion Symptom Severity Score
• Sideline Assessment