Collegiate Participation in Repetitive Head Impact Sports Does Not Adversely Affect Gait Dual Task Cost.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to assess gait related dual task cost (DTC) changes over the course of a collegiate athletic career in both repetitive head impact (RHI) exposed and non-RHI exposed athletes.

Setting: University Research Laboratory.

Participants: We recruited 47 NCAA intercollegiate athletes and grouped by RHI exposed (N = 27) and non-RHI (N = 20) sports.

Design: Participants completed 5 trials of single task (ST) and 5 trials of dual task (DT) gait with a working memory cognitive challenge both prior to their collegiate athletic careers (pre) and then again after they completed their collegiate athletic careers (post) (mean 1173 ± 341 days between tests) in this prospective longitudinal design. To assess for changes over the course of a career, separate 2 (group: RHI, non-RHI) × 2 (time: pre, post) mixed design ANOVA were performed for each dependent variable of interest (DTC gait velocity and DTC step length) and the model was adjusted for concussion history at the time of test and sex.

Main measures: Gait velocity and step length DTC.

Results: There were no significant group by time interactions for DTC gait velocity (F = 0.517, P = .476, η2 = 0.012) or DTC step length ((F = 0.206, P = .652, η2 = 0.005).

Conclusions: The primary finding of this study indicated no difference between RHI exposed and non-RHI exposed athletes gait DTC performance between the beginning and conclusion of their collegiate athletic careers. While the long-term effects of RHI remain to be fully determined, these results suggest that RHI may not adversely affect ST or DT gait performance when the individual is young.