Authors
Samaneh Chaychi, Mohsen Hadian, Charles Haskell Tator, Maria Carmela Tartaglia
Published in
Brain injury. Pages 1-9. Sep 07, 2026. Epub Sep 07, 2026.
Abstract
This population-based retrospective study investigated the impact of sex on annual case counts and incidence rates of concussions before and during COVID-19 pandemic.
Using administrative data from ICES, we identified 393,397 individuals with concussion between April 2017 and March 2022 in the Province of Ontario, Canada. A one-year washout period (no concussion/head injury diagnosis in the prior 365 days) was employed to ensure new cases. Data were stratified by sex, age groups, and rurality comparing 2019 as the pre-pandemic period to 2020 a the pandemic period.
The pandemic led to a sharp decline in concussion rates for both sexes across all age groups. Annual case counts dropped from over 99,000 cases in pre-pandemic years to 33,693 in 2020 with the most significant reductions in school-aged children and adolescents. Despite the overall decline, the female share of diagnosed concussions increased modestly during the pandemic, with age-stratified analyses showing that sex-specific patterns varied across age groups. Poisson regression analysis revealed that females had a 16.8% higher concussion rate than males after adjusting for age and rurality.
The pandemic significantly altered healthcare-recorded concussion patterns, likely reflecting both reduced exposure to injury risk and pandemic-related changes in healthcare-seeking and case capture. Our findings underscore the need to incorporate sex as a key variable in future concussion research and prevention strategies.
PMID:
42704112
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 07 Sep 2026.
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