Feasibility of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Assessment Based on Cardiovascular Response to Postural Change.

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.