886 MEP128 – Pre-season clinical outcomes informing concussion prevention in youth rugby players in Canada and South Africa
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background Following sport-related concussion, a multifaceted evaluation is recommended. Performance on multifaceted clinical outcomes could inform cultural adaptations for prevention strategies. Objective To evaluate differences in preseason clinical measures by sex and location in youth Rugby Union (“rugby”) players. Design Cross-sectional study that is a secondary analysis of two multisite international prospective cohort studies. Setting Youth rugby in Canada/South Africa. Participants A convenience sample of rugby players aged 11–18 years were invited to participate. A total of 610 youth rugby players (males=334, females=273, undisclosed=3) from Canada (n=547) and South Africa (n=63) participated. Assessment of Risk Factors Variables included sex (male/female) and geographical location (Canada/South Africa), with age grouping (<15,15/16,>17) as a covariate. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize baseline demographics. Linear, logistic regression, or a Mann-Whitney U-Test evaluated differences in outcomes by sex and location. Main Outcome Measurements Vestibulo-ocular reflex [head thrust test, dynamic visual acuity (DVA)]; Vestibular-Ocular Motor Screen; Cervical Spine [range of motion, cervical flexor endurance (CFE), cervical flexion rotation test, head perturbation test (HPT)]; and dynamic balance [advanced Functional Gait Assessment (aFGA)]. Results Males in South Africa performed better on cervical spine and balance outcomes [CFE (median difference=91.58s greater, z=11.13,p<0.01); aFGA (median score of 2.0 points better, z=4.61,p<0.01)], worse on DVA (median score 2 lines difference more, z=7.62,p<0.01), and had 3.72 (95%CI 1.99–6.99) greater odds of convergence distance >6cm (z=4.10,p<0.01) compared to males in Canada. Within Canada, females had a 5.11 (95%CI 2.48–7.76) seconds shorter CFE (t=3.81,p<0.01) and 2.40 (95%CI 1.62–3.55) times greater odds to score <8 on HPT (z=4.39,p<0.01) compared to males. Conclusions Differences exist in preseason clinical outcomes by location and sex. Further evaluation to understand the underlying physiological reason for these differences and the effect on concussion risk is needed. Understanding these potential differences will inform optimization of individually targeted concussion prevention strategies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".