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Feasibility of mild traumatic brain injury assessment based on cardiovascular response to postural change
Russell, K. N., Preble, E. A., Hegarty-Craver, M., Arrieux, J. P., Cole, W. R., Choi, Y. S., Grego, S., Rae Olmsted, K., & Gilchrist, K. H. (2020). Feasibility of mild traumatic brain injury assessment based on cardiovascular response to postural change. Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation, 35(5), E422-E428. https://doi.org/10.1097/htr.0000000000000582
OBJECTIVE: To determine the feasibility of short-term cardiovascular responses to postural change as a screening tool for mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), using heart rate metrics that can be measured with a wearable electrocardiogram sensor.
SETTING: Military TBI clinic.
DESIGN: Data collected from active-duty service members who had sustained a medically diagnosed mTBI within the prior 72 hours and from age- and sex-matched controls. Cardiac data collected while participants performed a sequence of postural changes.
MAIN MEASURES: Model classification compared with clinical mTBI diagnosis.
RESULTS: Cardiac biomarkers of mTBI were identified and logistic regression classifiers for mTBI were developed from different subsets of biomarkers. The best model achieved 90% sensitivity and 69% specificity using data from 2 different postural changes.
CONCLUSION: Noninvasive measurement of cardiovascular response to postural change is a promising approach for field-deployable post-mTBI screening.
