Symptoms

Some of these symptoms may appear right away, while others may not be noticed for days or months after the injury, or until the person starts resuming their everyday life and more demands are placed upon them. If you feel like you or someone you know is experiencing these symptoms please seek medical attention.

Symptoms of concussion usually fall into four categories:

Thinking/remembering

  • Difficulty thinking clearly
  • Feeling slowed down
  • Difficulty concentrating
  • Difficulty remembering new information

Emotional/mood

  • Irritability
  • Sadness
  • More emotional
  • Nervousness or anxiety

Physical

  • Headache
  • Fuzzy or blurry vision
  • Nausea or vomiting
    (early on)
  • Dizziness
  • Sensitivity to noise or light
  • Balance problems
  • Feeling tired, having no energy

Sleep

  • Sleeping more than usual
  • Sleep less than usual
  • Trouble falling asleep

Treatment

Our concussion specialists will you help you navigate all the steps of concussion recovery to get you back to the athletics safely.

ImPACT® at Florida Orthopaedic Institute

ImPACT® (immediate post-concussion assessment and cognitive testing) evaluates and documents multiple aspects of neurocognitive functioning, including memory, attention span, brain processing speed, reaction time, and post-concussive symptoms. Research-based computer tests developed to help our physicians evaluate an athlete’s recovery following concussion. User-friendly injury documentation system enables us to track the injury from the field and through the recovery process.

ImPACT® begins with a test administered in the preseason for a baseline, and includes verbal and visual memory, processing speed and reaction time. When a concussion is suspected, a follow-up test is administered to see if the results have changed from the baseline. Follow-up tests can be administered over days or weeks so we can continue to track the injury.

Why Florida Orthopaedic Institute uses ImPACT®

ImPACT® can help answer difficult questions about an athlete’s readiness to return to play, protecting them from the serious consequences of returning too soon. While traditional neurological and radiologic procedures such as CT, MRI, and EEG are helpful in identifying many serious concerns (e.g. skull fracture, hematoma, contusion), they are not as useful in identifying the effects of concussion. As a result, doctors often must rely on subjective observations or a patient’s self-reporting of symptoms to diagnose and track a concussion.

This is where ImPACT® can help. Using ImPACT® to implement baseline and post-injury neurocognitive testing can help objectively evaluate the concussed athlete’s post-injury condition and recovery to prevent the cumulative effects of concussion. In the event that baseline testing is not possible, ImPACT® has a normative database of thousands of non-injured athletes, which can also be used for effective comparison.