Item Details

title

UTILIZING HEAD MOTION MEASUREMENTS TO INFORM POST-CONCUSSION RETURN TO PLAY PROTOCOLS IN WOMEN’S ARTISTIC GYMNASTICS

author

Pritchard, Nicholas Stewart

abstract

Sports- and recreation-related concussions represent 1.1 to 1.9 million injuries each year among youth in the United States. Gymnastics has the second highest rate of sports-related concussion among women’s, high contact sports (i.e., soccer, basketball) in the National Collegiate Athletic Association, second only to women’s soccer. Gymnastics is performed at recreational, competitive club, high school, collegiate, and elite/Olympic levels, and is composed of seven distinct disciplines. Women’s artistic gymnastics is the most popular of all the disciplines, and has been recommended for developing strength and coordination in young female athletes. However, the physical demands of the sport often lead to a variety of injuries, including concussion, and females disproportionately represent a higher percentage (>80%) of gymnastics-related injuries treated in hospitals. Memory, concentration, and vestibular/ocular-motor impairments may occur post-concussion, but effects from repetitive rotational head movements, such as those experienced by gymnasts as part of their training and competitions, are unknown. Importantly, understanding whether head kinematic loads experienced by gymnasts exacerbate concussion-related symptoms is essential to designing effective return to play protocols for gymnasts recovering from concussion. Therefore, the objective of this project was to characterize the exposure profile of athletes involved in artistic gymnastics and its relationship with concussion-related clinical outcomes. This research is comprised of four parts: 1. Part 1 aims to define typical levels of head acceleration exposure experienced by gymnasts during normal participation in the sport. 2. Part 2 aims to evaluate the relationship between gymnastics participation and concussion-related clinical outcomes. 3. Part 3 aims to determine if conventional safety modifications can reduce head motion experienced during the performance of common skills in the sport. 4. Part 4 aims to evaluate current paradigms for progressing gymnasts from beginner level skills to more advanced skills within the context of head acceleration.

subject

Acrobat

Biomechanics

Concussion

Kinematics

Neurocognitive

Youth sports

contributor

Stitzel, Joel D (advisor)

Kruse, David W (committee member)

Bullock, Garrett S (committee member)

Flashman, Laura A (committee member)

Gayzik, F Scott (committee member)

date

2023-10-27T08:35:15Z (accessioned)

2023 (issued)

degree

Biomedical Engineering (discipline)

embargo

2028-09-05 (terms)

2028-09-05 (liftdate)

identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/102769 (uri)

language

en (iso)

publisher

Wake Forest University

type

Dissertation