When your young child complains of tiredness and seems sad days after a head injury, would you relate these “symptoms” to a recent concussion? Chances are the answer is no. While many children may complain of headache, dizziness, or, even worse, lose consciousness after a concussion, more subtle signs, like moodiness or sensitivity to light or sound, or even an inability focus, may not appear right away.
To help medical professionals, coaches and families assess concussion in this young age group (5-11) more accurately, ImPACT has developed ImPACT Pediatric, a concussion assessment tool that measures neurocognitive function. It’s a powerful tool considering that signs of pediatric concussion can include physical, emotional and cognitive symptoms which parents might not consider related to the recent injury. And, it’s the ONLY FDA-approved concussion and evaluation tool for this age group.
While baseline comparisons are ideal, ImPACT Pediatric also contains age reference, normative comparisons. It’s a quick, efficient test that assists in recovery monitoring and helps in the “return-to-sport” decision-making process. We highly recommend your child’s school, sports coaches and other medical teams use the tool to arrive at baseline tests which can then be used to compare with post-injury testing. These test scores are stored on a secure HIPAA server and are kept for a minimum of seven years, with comprehensive reports made easily available for medical providers.
Attention, memory, reaction time and cognitive speed are all easily and quickly measured with an iPad-computerized, interactive test (it takes about a half hour) which is more like a game. The interactive method is perfect for this age group who are already so tech savvy. And it’s not like a school “test” – nobody can fail. We simply are establishing personal measures of cognitive abilities. If used during post-injury concussion, the test costs should be covered by most insurances.
The MAC Alliance offers ImPACT Pediatric along with our ImPACT testing for older age groups. Call us today for more information and/or visit https://pediatric.impacttest.com/.
