AAP Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness Blog

Testing the waters
Heads up: A three-part series on concussion in youth sport
Jim Donnelly by Jim Donnelly (March 10, 2008)

Ottawa Sport Science approach to concussion management hightlighted in this article.

Cumberland Panthers’ head trainer Angel Charron says that while she can’t stop a concussion from occurring on the field, she can certainly do her darndest to prevent them.
That’s why the 15-year veteran of the east-end football club administers what she calls a DSST, or digit symbol substitution test – that is, a series of trials which helps to determine an athlete’s susceptibility to concussion – at the start of each season.

“Every kid is tested (at the beginning of the season),” she says. The test, similar versions of which are used by other clubs and school teams in Canada and the U.S., was developed by the Ottawa Sports Science Center and involves a series of hand-eye coordination and cognitive tests.

See http://www.eastottawa.ca/article-191521-Testing-the-waters.html for more details.