Our Crowdfunding Groups
To make a contribution, please contact the Development Office at 713-500-3200 or giving@uth.tmc.edu.
Our Mission
The Department of Orthopaedic Surgery Concussion Program at UTHealth strives to improve patient outcomes by advancing how concussions are reported, diagnosed, treated, and managed. We are dedicated to translating our research findings into real-life applications that will help patients, caregivers, and healthcare providers make informed decisions that lead to better prognoses for concussive injuries.
Adolescents & Post-Concussion Symptoms
Concussions are brain injuries that can be associated with persistent symptoms and other long-term consequences. Although these injuries can happen to people of all ages, the number of concussed adolescents has shown the greatest increase with approximately 20% of American teenagers reporting that they have been diagnosed with a concussion at least once in their lifetime.
Post-concussion symptoms, or PCS, can be debilitating and can disrupt how a person feels, thinks, functions, and sleeps. They can lead to increased absence from school, impaired performance in the classroom, and diminished quality of life, all of which are stressful for young patients and their families. To learn more about how concussion affected the lives of some of our former patients, please click here. Compared to other age groups, adolescents report more severe PCS, and their symptoms last longer, with an estimated 1 in 5 concussed teens experiencing PCS for months or years. The few options for managing long-term PCS are outnumbered by conflicting reports on how effective they are and when they should be started, especially in young patients. This is a problem for patients and healthcare providers.
Our Project
We will examine an innovative therapy that holds promise in providing safe, effective relief from PCS early in the course of recovery and may minimize the risk of delayed recovery by reducing PCS duration and severity in recently concussed adolescents. The therapy used in this study is not invasive, does not involve medication, and will be administered at home using a wearable device called Cereset Home. Similar to an EEG, Cereset Home collects information about your brain activity through sensors placed on your scalp. Through a process called Brainwave Optimization®, it supports your brain as it deals with daily stress by helping it relax and reset itself to a more balanced state.
When administered by technicians in a clinic, Cereset Home's core technology has been reported to benefit emotional and physiological health and reduce symptoms similar to PCS. Our study will examine whether recently concussed adolescents who use the wearable, self-administered version of this technology experience benefits similar to those reported for in-clinic procedures.
Our Goal
The goal of our campaign is to raise funds to enroll at least 10 participants in this study. With your support, we can evaluate the effectiveness of Cereset Home in improving concussion outcomes and quality of life for adolescent patients and their families.
