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Concussions are associated with nonspecific symptoms and therefore difficult to diagnose in children. Researchers performed a meta-analysis of 23 studies on pediatric concussion and assessed the accuracy of various symptoms and signs.
The symptoms most associated with concussion were mental fog, noise sensitivity, nausea, and light sensitivity. The positive likelihood ratio (LR) of mental fog was particularly high (≈12).
The only finding that reduced the possibility of concussion was absence of headache (LR–, 0.2).
Among all signs, oculomotor abnormalities shortly after injury had the highest diagnostic value. Abnormal near-point convergence (e.g., if the distance at which fixating on an object causes symptoms is more than 5–…