Evaluation of the King-Devick Test to Assess Eye Movements and the Performance of Rapid Number Naming in Concussed and non-Concussed Service Members

This project was aimed at investigating the sensitivity and specificity of different screening modalities to concussion in Army Soldiers attending combat training and airborne school. The primary study assessed changes in oculomotor functioning as measured by the King-Devick (KD) test. Results showed that the KD tests has poor discriminant ability (AUC = .60, sensitivity/specificity) to distinguish between concussed and non-concussed Soldiers, and therefore, should only be used to supplement clinical evaluations. The use of salivary biomarkers shows promise as a potential screening tool in that when our data, from a subset of our Soldiers, were included with other samples to form much larger studies, had adequate discriminant ability (AUC = .84-.86). Brain imaging (7T MRI), resting-state functional connectivity of a subset of the sample showed promise, albeit major limitations due to sample size, for normative modeling analytic approach with sensitivity of 74 percent and specificity of 96 percent.