To provide an overview of the Cambridge Sports Concussion Clinic; to investigate trends in patients’ neurocognition utilising assessment with the Immediate Post-concussion Assessment and Cognitive Test (ImPACT) as stratified by sport. 

Professional sporting litigation in the USA has brought to the fore the issue of sports concussion. Despite this, UK outpatient management remains in its infancy, with less than five centres offering specialised post-injury review. This poster presents data from the Cambridge Sports Concussion Clinic (CSCC), comparing ImPACT assessments across motorsport and rugby.

The data is a retrospective analysis of a prospectively maintained database cohort, in which demographic, clinical and neurocognitive data are archived. The submission includes CSCC patients who attended Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge for clinical review June 2017-March 2019, who were diagnosed with concussion and completed an ImPACT assessment.

36 post-injury reviews were completed across 19 clinical encounters with patients aged 15yrs+. 47% of athletes were injured during motorsport (saloon car, rally, motocross and single seater racing), 47% in rugby and 5% during equestrian activity. The majority were professional (47%) or competed in collegiate (21%) or high school (21%) competition with 1-13 years at their current sporting level (mean4.2 +/-SD 4.2 years). Only 22% of 18 patients were concussion-naïve prior to their current injury, with a range of 0-4 physician-confirmed diagnoses (1.7 +/- 1.3). Comparison of motorsport drivers versus rugby athletes reveals trends towards lower scores in ImPACT memory composite values (verbal F 0.57, t -1.4, p 0.15; memory F 2.1, t -0.9, p 0.37) and improved reaction time (F 3.3, t 1.8, p 0.08) with significant differences in visual motor speed (F 0.90, t-4.1, p < 0.001).

Preliminary cross-sport analyses indicate that motorsport competitors have worse composite memory scores, better reaction times and significantly altered visual motor speed. These early data provide support for sports-specific approaches.