A Provo hospital is investing in technology its doctors say will help gauge the recovery of everyone from 6-year-olds who fall off their trikes to Brigham Young University linebackers.

"This is really an attempt to use what we know about brain injuries to this point," he said.

Using the test -- which measures things like memory, coordination and reflexes -- doctors will be able to compare results against a baseline and make more informed calls when it comes to patient recovery, Snyder said. In a hospital in which the emergency room sees about 1,000 concussions a year, that's important because many are hazily diagnosed or treated, leading to complications like depression and mood swings down the road.

"About 85 percent of what I see are concussions," said Snyder, a 15-year UVRMC veteran. "All of these problems start to come home to roost."

Snyder started wondering few years ago about how the hospital could acquire the technology, which has been around for about a decade. Eventually he hooked up with Dr. Brent Rich, director of UVRMC's sports medicine clinic, who saw its potential among local athletes as well.

"Our goal is not just to get them to play the next football game. We want to get them beyond that," Rich said. "Are they able to read bus schedules?"

There are a handful of computerized diagnostic technologies on the market. It just so happened that Rich was personal friends with one of the cofounders of ImPACT, Dr. Mickey Collins of Pittsburgh, so he invited him out to educate the UVRMC team. Having already been adopted by the NFL, MLB, NASCAR and several NBA teams, Rich said he was confident it was the technology they wanted.

"It's a tool in the toolbox. It's not the only thing we're going to rely on," he said. "It's just one component of a full evaluation."

The process involves administering a pretest -- for athletes, ideally before their sporting seasons begin -- that's kept on file. If someone subsequently sustains a concussion, their recovery can be measured by administering another test and comparing the results.

That will help doctors use more objective measures before returning someone to play when they could possibly suffer a follow-up concussion, said Dr. Mitchell Pratte, BYU's head team physician.

"In some ways we're protecting the kids from themselves," Pratte said, explaining that athletes eager to get back on the field or court have a tendency to "fake it."

Dr. Melissa McLane, Utah Valley University's head team physician, concurred, adding some clever players have learned to manipulate the conventional pen-and-paper tests that doctors have used for years.

"It was easier to memorize," she said.

Though testing isn't available to the general public yet and athletes just started pretesting this month, ImPACT is already yielding results. A UVU women's soccer player was pretested just before taking a hit to the head, and physicians are now relying on test data to clear her for play again.

Training has been rough on the BYU football team this year, with four or five concussions so far. Though none of the injured players took a baseline test first, the school's medical staff is comparing their post-concussive results to an average compiled by ImPACT for college football players. That's giving the staff more confidence that when the players return to the huddle, they'll be in top form, said head football trainer Kevin Morris.

"Every season, you deal with concussions and how they affect the team," he said. "It sometimes can be very detrimental to a team if a kid doesn't recover quickly from them, or if there's not a measure to help determine return to play. If they return too quickly, there's lots of other problems that can occur with that."

Eventually, UVRMC hopes to begin working with local high school athletes in injury-prone sports like lacrosse, gymnastics and diving, Rich said.

"Ideally, it'd be good to have a baseline test on every high school athlete," he said.

But the program will be open to more than sports stars: beginning sometime in October, the hospital hopes to make ImPACT testing available to anyone who wants it. For $20, anyone interested will be able to walk into the clinic, take the test and discuss the results with a specialist, Rich said.

• Ace Stryker can be reached at 344-2556 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it