Electrophysiological testing in concussion: A guide to clinical applications
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Published version
Author(s)
Papathanasiou, Eleftherios S
Cronin, Thomas
Seemungal, Barry
Sandhu, Jaswinder
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
The diagnosis of mild traumatic brain injury in concussion is difficult since it is often unwitnessed, the patient’s recall is unreliable and initial clinical examination is often unrevealing, correlating poorly with the extent of brain injury. At present, there are no objective biomarkers of mild traumatic brain injury in concussion. Thus, a sensitive gold standard test is required to enable the effective and safe triage of patients who present to the acute services. As well as triage, objective monitoring of patients’ recovery over time and separate from clinical features that patients may develop following the injury (e.g. depression and migraine) is also needed. In contrast to neuroimaging, which is widely used to investigate traumatic brain injury patients, electrophysiology is readily available, is cheap and there are internationally recognized standardised methodologies. Herein, we review the existing literature on electrophysiological testing in concussion and mild traumatic brain injury; specifically, electroencephalogram, polysomnography, brainstem auditory evoked potentials, electro- and videonystagmography, vestibular evoked myogenic potentials, visually evoked potentials, somatosensory evoked potentials and transcranial magnetic stimulation.
Date Issued
2018-12-10
Date Acceptance
2018-09-26
Citation
Journal of Concussion, 2018, 2
ISSN
2059-7002
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Concussion
Volume
2
Copyright Statement
© 2018 The Author(s). This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and
distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and
distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Sponsor
Medical Research Council (MRC)
National Institute for Health Research
Imperial Health Charity
Imperial Health Charity
Grant Number
MR/P006493/1
RDA26
RF18\100033
GG1516\100028
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2018-12-10