Acute Eye-Tracking Changes Correlated With Vestibular Symptom Provocation Following Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.

Objectives: To quantify norms and changes in eye-tracking proficiency, and determine vestibular symptom correlations in varsity college athletes following acute mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). We hypothesized that mTBI impacts central coordination between the vestibular and oculomotor systems with resultant changes in eye-tracking proficiency that are correlated with vestibular symptom provocation.

Design: Retrospective cohort study.

Setting: Sports medicine care at a single institution.

Patients: One hundred and nineteen college athletes diagnosed with mTBI by a physician between 2013 and 2019.

Interventions: N/A.

Main outcome measures: Standard deviation of tangential error, standard deviation of radian error, mean phase error, and horizontal gain from virtual reality-based, circular eye-tracking goggles used at baseline and within 72 hours post-mTBI. Headache, dizziness, nausea, and fogginess provocation after the Vestibular Ocular Motor Screening (VOMS) smooth pursuits subtest compared with pretest baseline, assessed within 72 hours post-mTBI.

Results: One hundred and nineteen college athletes (N = 56 women and 63 men) aged 18 to 24 years sustained a total of 177 mTBI. Forty-four percent of athletes displayed abnormal eye-tracking on at least 1 eye-tracking measure following acute mTBI compared with their baseline. From the VOMS, horizontal gain showed medium-sized to large-sized positive correlations with headache ( r = 0.34) and dizziness ( r = 0.54), respectively. Mean phase error showed a medium-sized negative correlation with nausea ( r = -0.32) on the VOMS.

Conclusions: Eye-tracking proficiency was impaired and correlated with vestibular symptom provocation following acute mTBI in college athletes. Future research should examine eye-tracking proficiency testing in other acute care settings to support mTBI diagnosis.