Objective To investigate if time to clinic is associated with recovery outcome measures in athletes who sustained a sports-related concussion. We hypothesized that athletes seen in clinic sooner would experience more rapid improvements than athletes whose time between date of injury and first clinic visit was later.

Design Prospective observational study.

Setting Primary care sports concussion clinic.

Participants Eighty subjects (12–22 y; 52 male, 28 female) were diagnosed with a sports-related concussion by a physician at their first clinic visit within 1–10 (Group A, n=48), 11–20 (Group B, n=19), and 21–30 (Group C, n=13) days of injury.

Outcome Measures Post-Concussion Symptom Score recall (22 questions; 0–6 Likert scale) and King-Devick score (KD; total time [sec]) from subjects’ first two clinical visits (V1, V2; 12 +/- 4 days).

Main Results None of the groups differed significantly on King-Devick total time at V1 and all groups significantly improved (12.66, 8.33, and 9.23 sec, respectively; P<0.001) from V1 to V2. Regarding symptoms, Groups A and B had significantly lower symptom scores at V2 compared to V1 (10.5 & 13.1; P<0.001), while Group C did not significantly improve from V1 to V2.

Conclusions Following a sports-related concussion, individuals who were treated by a physician trained in concussion care within three weeks of injury showed significant improvement in symptoms from Visit 1 to 2, whereas individuals whose first clinic visit was longer than 3 weeks post-injury did not. These findings suggest that early clinical intervention in the first 3 weeks post-concussion is advantageous for recovery.