The sport concussion baseline assessment: an investigation of sex and sport differences

Objective To assess for sex and sport baseline differences for the Immediate Postconcussion and Cognitive Test (ImPACT) and Sensory Organisation Test (SOT) in collegiate athletes. Design Cross-sectional. Setting Research laboratory. Participants Participants consisted of 315 male (n=189) and female (n=126) division I collegiate athletes with an average of 19.5 + 1.34 and 19.3 + 1.31 years, respectively. Intervention Participants completed ImPACT and the SOT baseline assessments as part of their university concussion management protocol. Outcome measures Analyses of variance were used to assess for sex and sport differences for ImPACT’s Visual and Verbal Memory, Visual Motor Speed, and Reaction Time and the SOT’s composite scores. Post-hoc analyses were performed with Tukey’s test. All analyses were performed with α=.05. Main results In terms of sex, females scored significantly higher than males on ImPACT’s Verbal Memory (F (1,314)=4.85, p=0.03) and Visual Motor Speed (F (1,314)=4.51, p=0.03) composite scores. Within male sports, a significant difference was observed for the SOT composite score (F (6,181)=3.22, p=0.01). Within female sports, a significant difference was observed between sports for ImPACT’s Reaction Time composite score (F (6,125)=4.16, p=0.01). Conclusions Overall, sex as well as sport differences were observed for baseline ImPACT and SOT performance for one or more composite scores. Our results support the use of baseline assessments to account for performance differences between sex and sport. Competing interests None.