Calgary –
A study led by the University of Calgary has found that children’s intelligence is unaffected by brain injuries, which is good news for parents of children with concussions.
research, Published in the medical journal “Pediatrics” Taken Monday from emergency room visits at children’s hospitals in the United States and Canada.
“Parents always ask, ‘What’s going to happen to my child?’ There are a lot of worries in the world right now,” said Dr. Keith Yates, a professor in the university’s psychology department and lead author of a pediatrics paper.
“People are very concerned about concussions and we are happy to share the good news with parents that we are not seeing any changes in children’s IQs or intellectual abilities as a result of these injuries.”
Yeates is an expert on the consequences of childhood brain injuries such as concussions and traumatic brain injuries. He was involved in two of his previous studies that provided data for the most recent study.
“We included the IQ test because it was a very standard result and we wanted to be able to account for our sample. I realized that I could ease my concerns a little bit.”
The study compared 566 children diagnosed with concussion with 300 children with orthopedic or musculoskeletal injuries. The children’s ages ranged from 8 to 16 years and were collected from two previous studies.
Children with orthopedic injuries were included as a comparison group to consider other variables that may influence IQ, such as demographic background and experience of trauma or pain.
Canadian data were collected from children’s hospital emergency rooms in Calgary, Vancouver, Edmonton, Ottawa, and Montreal between 2016 and 2019.
In a Canadian hospital, patients were given IQ tests three months after their injuries.
The US cohort was studied at two children’s hospitals in Ohio, where patients underwent IQ testing 3 to 18 days after injury.
Yates said people in the study were generally not hospitalized, and brain imaging showed no signs of damage.
But they are still injuries, Yates said.
“These concussions are the kind of injuries that athletes get, just like people get hurt when they slip on ice and fall and hit their head,” he said.
“It’s not that concussions have no negative effects, but they didn’t affect IQ, even though many of them still suffered from many of the problems that can result from concussions.”
Yates said a concussion is different from a severe or moderate traumatic brain injury that lowers your IQ.
This report by the Canadian Press Agency was first published on July 17, 2023.
