Neck Health - The Importance of Cervical Spine Assessment and Treatment After Concussion

If you hit your head hard enough to cause a concussion, your neck felt those same forces. Concussions and neck injuries are unfortunate BFFs. Like Brennan Huff and Dale Doback, always causing havoc. The good news is, now we know better! Like the ending to Stepbrothers, the research on this topic has finally matured enough to help us manage this chaos.

New research (from 2021 and 2024) shows us that:
◾ The neck is involved in a high amount of persisting post-concussion symptoms. 90% of folks who report symptoms lasting beyond one month have a cervicogenic component.
◾ Neck pain can be tricky - sometimes it's very apparent right away and sometimes patients don't recognize the injury until several days later. A wide range of patients reported neck issues acutely (7 to 69%), yet that number became 90% by the one month time point.

THE GOOD NEWS:
◾ If your concussion physical therapist or other provider can help you recognize, assess and treat the neck injury early after your concussion, it's ENORMOUS in speeding up your concussion recovery. In fact, patients with concussion and cervical injuries had the same recovery time and same incidence of persisting symptoms than patients who had a concussion with no cervical injury...despite having worse symptoms early on!

For a thorough neck evaluation, book here.

Cheever K, McDevitt J, Phillips J, Kawata K. The Role of Cervical Symptoms in Post-concussion Management: A Systematic Review. Sports Med. 2021 Sep;51(9):1875-1891. doi: 10.1007/s40279-021-01469-y.

McPherson JI, Kaur G, Darling SR, Surace A, Willer BS, Leddy JJ, Haider MN. Early Identification and Management of Cervical Impairments in Pediatric Patients With Concussion May Reduce Risk of Delayed Recovery. Clin J Sport Med. 2024 Jan 1;34(1):25-29. doi: 10.1097/JSM.0000000000001179.