COLUMBUS – Although doctors recommend patients limit their screen time while recovering from concussions, researchers at Ohio State found teenagers showed significant improvement when they were allowed to use a smartphone application designed to help patients recover.
To minimize activity and allow the brain time to rest and heal, doctors advise patients who’ve suffered concussions to avoid screen time on computers, televisions, tablets and smartphones but during a recent study, researchers actually encouraged teenagers to use an app, called SuperBetter, which casts the patient as the hero in an ongoing game about their recovery, and the results were encouraging.
“Every single teenager who used the app in our study showed improvements from the time they started playing the game to the time they finished with us,” said Lise Worthen-Chaudhari, lead author of the study and a researcher at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. “The app not only helped them feel emotionally more optimistic about recovering from their concussions, but it also improved physical symptoms like headaches and blurred vision that can severely impact their quality of life.” “
The 19 teens who participated in the study received standard of care for concussion symptoms that persisted beyond three weeks after the head injury and the experimental group also used the SuperBetter app, Worthen-Chaudhari said.
The key is that the app encourages patients to become active participants in their recovery and gives them specific tasks to accomplish in order to better manage their symptoms, she said.
SuperBetter requires patients to battle enemies like dizziness and headaches along the way and allows them to invite friends and family to follow their recovery and offer encouragement, Worthen-Chaudhari said.
The American Academy of Neurology recommends limiting cognitive and physical effort and prohibiting sports involvement until a concussed individual is asymptomatic without using medication.
That much physical, cognitive and social inactivity represents a lifestyle change with its own risk factors, including social isolation, depression and increased incidence of suicidal ideology, the researchers noted.
Results of the study are published online in the journal Brain Injury.