Southern is proud to be taking part in the AUS-mTBI Study, which aims to gather vital insights to predict long term outcomes following concussion.
The national collaborative effort, led by Curtin University, brings together clinicians and healthcare providers from around Australia, who partnered with researchers and people with lived experience, to design the AUS-mTBI concussion app.
Concussion is a brain injury caused by a knock or blow to the head or a sudden change in motion.
"Concussion is a common injury," said Louise Casey, Trauma and Emergency Department Clinical Nurse Consultant and AUS-mTBI Principal Investigator for Southern.
"There are many causes of concussions including falls, recreational injuries, car accidents, or sports. While many children and adults with concussion will notice their symptoms improve within a few days, it can take longer to recover from a concussion."
"Approximately 30% of children and adults may experience symptoms for longer than four weeks. Early identification of concussion and appropriate management in the early stages post-injury can help to accelerate recovery. It is therefore important a suspected concussion is not ignored."
The AUS-mTBI study seeks to discover why some people experience long-term, sometimes debilitating symptoms when it comes to concussions. It involves more than 100 concussion experts and their organisations around Australia and is recruiting thousands of people from across the country, to help build a clearer picture of concussion recovery.
Central to the study is the HeadCheck app, developed in collaboration with the AFL by the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute to help translate the research in an accessible and useable format to give concussion sufferers, as well as parents, trainers, coaches and teachers, information to recognise concussion and manage recovery.
The HeadCheck app can be downloaded for free from the App Store or Google Play or accessed via the web-based platform.
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