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Background: Concussion is a common neurological injury occurring during contact sport. Current guidelines recommend that no athlete should return to play while symptomatic or displaying cognitive dysfunction. This study compared post-concussion cognitive function in recently concussed athletes who were symptomatic/asymptomatic at the time of assessment with that of non-injured (control) athletes.

Methods: Prospective study of 615 male Australian Rules footballers. Before the season, all participants (while healthy) completed a battery of baseline computerised (CogSport) and paper and pencil cognitive tasks. Sixty one injured athletes (symptomatic = 25 and asymptomatic = 36) were reassessed within 11 days of being concussed; 84 controls were also reassessed. The serial cognitive function of the three groups was compared using analysis of variance.

Results: The performance of the …