Association of Multidomain Assessment Outcomes With Referral for Vestibular Therapy After Concussion

Multiple aspects of a multidomain assessment have been validated for identifying concussion; however, researchers have yet to determine which components are related to referral for vestibular therapy.

To identify which variables from a multidomain assessment were associated with receiving a referral for vestibular therapy after a concussion.

Retrospective chart review, level of evidence 3.

Participants (n = 331; age = 16.9 ± 7.2 years; 39.3% female) were diagnosed with a concussion per international consensus criteria by a clinical neuropsychologist after presenting to a concussion specialty clinic.

Medical chart data were extracted from the first clinical visit regarding preinjury medical history, computerized neurocognition, Post-Concussion Symptom Scale, Concussion Clinical Profiles Screen, and Vestibular Ocular Motor Screening within 16.2 ± 46.7 days of injury. We built 5 backwards logistic regression models to associate the outcomes from each of the 5 assessments with referral for vestibular therapy. A final logistic regression model was generated using variables retained in the previous 5 models as potential predictors of referral for vestibular therapy.

The 5 models built from individual components of the multidomain assessment predicted referral for vestibular therapy (R2 = 0.01-0.28) with 1 to 6 statistically significant variables. The final multivariate model (R2 = 0.40) retained 9 significant variables, represented by each of the 5 multidomain assessments except neurocognition. Variables that had the strongest association with vestibular therapy referral were motor vehicle accident mechanism of injury (odds ratio [OR] = 15.45), migraine history (OR = 3.25), increased headache when concentrating (OR = 1.81), and horizontal vestibular ocular reflex (OR = 1.63).

We demonstrated the utility of a multidomain assessment and identified outcomes associated with a referral for vestibular therapy after a concussion.