Clinical outcomes

The 16-item Rivermead Post-concussion Questionnaire (RPQ) measures severity of physical symptoms (e.g., headaches, dizziness, nausea) as well as cognitive, mood, and sleep disturbances associated with mTBI. Each item is rated on a Likert scale of 0 to 4, with 0 indicating the symptom was not experienced at all and 4 indicating the symptom was a severe problem within the past week, as compared with pre-injury status¹². Because rating an item 1 is equivalent to “no more of a problem”, responses of 0 and 1 were merged into a category of 0. The maximum RPQ score is 64. The Quality of Life after Brain Injury—Overall Scale (QOLIBRI-OS) is a health-related quality-of-life instrument used for TBI patients with six items that comprise an overall score (range 0–100, lower scores indicate worse quality of life)¹³. The Short-Form 12 (SF-12) physical health is a summary scale using a subset of items from the SF-36 scales¹⁴. Summary scales are standardized to have higher scores indicate better health.