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From left: Kian MerchantBorna, Kourtney Korczak, Sarah Dermady, Jeffrey Bazarian, M.D.
Predicting prolonged concussion recovery and the risk of repeated head hits An estimated 3 million people in the United States are diagnosed with a concussion every year. The majority of those concussions are caused by sports-related injuries. Most people recover quickly, but for a third, it can take three or more months to recuperate. “The question is – can we identify those people early after an injury?” said Jeffrey Bazarian, M.D., professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC). “If we could know – pretty precisely – which concussed individuals were destined for prolonged recovery, we would be in a much better position to test what medicines or therapies work to shorten the duration of recovery. We want to focus our research on the people who take a long time to get better; then we can start to figure out what medicine works and what therapy works, what works in improving concussion recovery.” Bazarian has been studying concussions for more than a decade and is currently working
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on a research project to better understand how concussions impact kids. The study, which is funded by a $10 million grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), will test ways to predict which kids will have symptoms, such as headache, dizziness, and trouble concentrating, for three or more Jeffrey Bazarian, M.D. months after a concussion. Understanding how the mechanisms of a developing brain are impacted by concussion is critical, and a goal of the multisite study involving the University of Rochester, the University of California, Los Angeles, and four other institutions. The study is
UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER | ERNEST J. DEL MONTE INSTITUTE FOR NEUROSCIENCE
