Culture Post: Full Recovery After a Child’s Concussion May Take Longer Than Previously Thought

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by MedicalXpress.

University of Montreal-led research has found that children who sustain concussion may need three months or longer to be considered optimally recovered across physical, cognitive, socioemotional, and resilience domains.

Concussion affects millions of children annually, leading to physical, cognitive, sleep, and emotional symptoms which can impact academic and psychological functioning and reduce quality of life. Most children return to pre-injury optimal functioning levels within four weeks of injury, with approximately 30% of children experiencing persistent symptoms beyond that timeframe. Optimal functioning is poorly defined, and little is known of what contributes to good recovery.

Previous research has applied varied criteria for assessing recovery, making comparisons difficult. In one approach, wellness was defined as absence of symptoms combined with above-average quality of life.

Using this framework, only 41.5% of children met wellness criteria four weeks after concussion, rising to 52.2% at 12 weeks. A similar analysis in younger children showed fewer with concussion met optimal functioning benchmarks over six and 18 months when compared with children who had orthopedic injuries or typical development.

In the study, “Optimal Recovery Following Pediatric Concussion,” published in JAMA Network Open, researchers conducted a prospective cohort study to document the timeframe of recovery to optimal functioning, defined comprehensively across motor-physical, cognitive, socioemotional, and resilience-support domains, in children aged 8 to 16 years.

Participants included 967 children, with 633 in the concussion group and 334 in the orthopedic injury group. Recruitment occurred between September 2016 and July 2019 during acute emergency department visits at five Pediatric Emergency Research Canada network sites.

Results suggest that children who sustain concussion may need greater than three months to be considered optimally recovered across physical, cognitive, socioemotional, and resilience domains. Most children in the study reached optimal functioning within three to six months. Data further suggest that females may take longer than males to achieve comparable recovery levels.

According to the authors, these findings may help to explain why some children, especially girls, take longer to feel as though they are well, even though subjective and objective assessments of symptoms or specific functions indicate absence of problems.

Source: MedicalXpress
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-04-full-recovery-child-concussion-longer.html

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