Post-Concussion syndrome is an unusual syndrome that affects about 15% of people who get a concussion. A concussion is caused by mild brain injury usually as a result of a blow to the head. When a concussion is mild, most people recover from major symptoms, like nausea, dizziness and headache within a week to two weeks. What puzzles medical researchers is that some people continue to have symptoms or develop post-concussion syndrome, and that these symptoms can last for weeks after healing has occurred. In rare cases, symptoms can persist for a year or more after a person has suffered a concussion.

Doctors and medical researchers are unclear why people develop post-concussion syndrome. There doesn’t seem to be a correlation between severity of concussion and development of the syndrome. Some researchers believe that the condition may be entirely psychological, while others argue that there is medical cause, even if it remains unidentified. Researchers do see that the syndrome is more prevalent among people who are older; so one identifiable risk factor for the illness is age. Women are also more at risk for developing post-concussion syndrome than are men.

Symptoms of post-concussion syndrome are essentially persistence of symptoms you might have in the first few weeks after having a head injury. These include:

• Dizziness
• Headaches
• Difficulty Sleeping
• Changes in Mood, particularly greater irritability
• Sensitivity to light or noise
• Tiredness
• Changes in memory

Treatment for this syndrome should begin with treatment for a concussion. If you have injured your head enough to where it caused loss of consciousness, chances are you’ve had a concussion. When concussion symptoms don’t resolve within a few weeks, there aren’t any standard methods for treatment. Instead, doctors tend to treat the symptoms that remain. Headaches might be treated with pain medication, and nausea would be treated with medications that help control nausea, which can incidentally make you feel more tired.

Some doctors may also want to perform a magnetic resonance imaging test (MRI) to look for residual injury that has not healed. Sometimes the extent of brain injury may be underestimated at first, and swelling or bruising can still exist. When this is the case, the person isn’t really experiencing post-concussion syndrome but is recovering from a more severe brain injury than was previously thought. Occasionally medication is prescribed to treat residual symptoms, or steroids like prednisone may be prescribed to help reduce inflammation.

It makes sense to see a doctor if your symptoms of concussion haven’t resolved within a few weeks. Though there is no one treatment for post-concussion syndrome, and doctors haven’t quite figured out what causes it, treating symptoms can help a person feel more comfortable.