While the Pediatrics research was underway, Ware was a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at UCalgary, where Yeates was her supervisor. Ashley Ware, PhD, a professor at Georgia State University and lead author of the paper. The findings of the study are important to share with parents, says Dr. This allowed the researchers to determine whether the children’s IQs were different than what would be expected minus the concussion.Īshley Ware, now a professor at Georgia State University, was a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at UCalgary when the research published in Pediatrics was underway. The children with concussion were compared to children with orthopedic injuries other than concussion to control for other factors that that might affect IQ, such as demographic background and the experience of trauma and pain. Across the board, concussion was not associated with lower IQ.” “None of these factors made a difference. “We looked at socioeconomic status, patient sex, severity of injuries, concussion history, and whether there was a loss of consciousness at the time of injury,” says Yeates. cohorts gave the Pediatrics study an abundant sample and it allowed Yeates and his co-authors - from universities in Edmonton, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, Atlanta, Utah, and Ohio, along with Calgary’s Mount Royal University - to test patients with a wide range of demographics and clinical characteristics. The absence of a difference in IQ after concussion is harder to prove than the presence of a difference.”Ĭombining the Canadian and U.S. “It’s hard to collect big enough samples to confirm a negative finding. “The data on this has been mixed and opinions have varied within the medical community,” says Yeates. Yeates is a renowned expert on the outcomes of childhood brain disorders, including concussion and traumatic brain injuries. Keith Yeates, PhD, a professor in UCalgary’s Department of Psychology and senior author of the Pediatrics paper. “Obviously there’s been a lot of concern about the effects of concussion on children, and one of the biggest questions has been whether or not it affects a child’s overall intellectual functioning,” says Dr. cohort was conducted at two children’s hospitals in Ohio, wherein patients completed IQ tests three to 18 days post-injury. In the Canadian hospitals, patients completed IQ tests three months post-injury. The Canadian cohort encompasses data collected from five children’s hospital emergency rooms, including Alberta Children’s Hospital in Calgary, along with those in Vancouver, Edmonton, Ottawa, and Montreal (CHU Sainte-Justine). The children range in age from eight to 16 and they were recruited from two cohort studies. The study compares 566 children diagnosed with concussion to 300 with orthopedic injuries. The findings - taken from emergency room visits in children’s hospitals in Canada and the United States - show that IQ and intelligence is not affected in a clinically meaningful way by paediatric concussions. But a new study led out of the University of Calgary, published July 17 in the medical journal Pediatrics, may set worried parental minds slightly at ease. That anxiety is heightened greatly when those injuries involve concussions. The angst parents feel when their children sustain injuries is surely one of the universal conditions of parenthood.
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