Concussion Care - Small Falls, Big Impacts

Dear Parent,

Has your child fallen and bumped their head?    . . .  I am sure they have . . . Now are you missing anything? Are you aware of the “red flags” of a past concussion, that may be affecting your child’s performance in life: in school or sports?

Well I am excited to share a few simple, yet informative concepts of Small Falls, Big Impacts.

First, Bobby’s story . . . In grade 1, he was having significant challenges learning and after 12 months of occupation therapy (OT) his skills improvement plateaued and the therapist observed Bobby’s eye-tracking seemed off – could be a vision issue?  Likely. Well, in fact Bobby fell from his high chair at 1 ½ yrs of age: Small Fall, Big Impact.

The human brain grows to about adult-size by around the age of  2 years with 86 billion neurons. Yet we learn new things every day. Why?  The connections of the brain’s neuro-centres continue to develop and branch-out to help us learn and is part of neuro-plasticity. Those connections and branching are important yet fragile and susceptible to head impacts – and even more so in young children where these connections are expanding rapidly throughout the young developing brain.

Studies show that 90% of patients with traumatic brain injury suffer from a visual distortion pattern that limits their performance in life.  

For Bobby’s fall from the high chair, he suffered acute pain, tears and crying yet there are long-term consequences with grade school learning – time reveals past falls.

 “Red Flags” of a previous a concussion may be revealed by school performance which include reduced reading skills, slow to complete assignments, poor short-term memory and reduced attention control.

Vision function is brain function. A NeuroVision Screening should always be considered and is significantly more sensitive to diagnose a concussion compared brain scans. Vision makes up 50% of the sensory input to the brain and 90% of the brain is involved in vision processing. Brain function is vision function.

In Review:

1. Concussion have a deeper impact on children who are developing skills for life; They are still developing the connective-networks to the neuro-centres of the brain.
2. Over 90% of patients with concussions have a significant visual distortion pattern.
3. Concussions have early and long-term consequences – especially as life gets more complex in this digital age (remember Bobby’s story)
4. Neuro-Vision testing is more sensitive to diagnose a concussion compared to a brain scan like MRI (they do not pick up the damaged connections between neural-centres in the brain)
5. Brain function is vision function – the eye-brain connection. Both are developed from the same embryonic tissue.

Good news – I have more information for you.