Assessment guide · 9 min read
Concussion Test at Home: What You Can and Cannot Check
There is no test you can do at home that diagnoses a concussion, and there is no test you can do at home that rules one out. Not an app, not a finger-following exercise, not a set of questions. Concussion is a clinical diagnosis — a trained person takes a history and examines the injured person — and the FDA has not approved any device that can assess or diagnose a brain injury without an evaluation by a health care provider.
What you can do at home is a great deal, and it matters. You can recognize the signs. You can check for the danger signs that mean an emergency department tonight rather than a clinic tomorrow. You can decide whether someone comes off the field — that decision belongs to you, and the answer is almost always yes. You can score symptoms on the same scale a clinic uses, so the appointment starts with data instead of "he's not himself."
This guide covers the emergency danger signs first, then the Concussion Recognition Tool that was built for people without medical training, what SCAT6 is and why it is not yours to use, how to track symptoms on a validated scale, the myth about waking someone hourly through the night, what the first 48 hours should look like, and what the evidence actually shows for consumer concussion apps and devices.
Which signs mean the emergency room right now?
Read this before anything else. If any of the following is present after a blow to the head or body, stop assessing and get emergency care.
The CDC says to call 911 or go to the emergency department if the injured person:
- Has a headache that gets worse and does not go away
- Experiences weakness, numbness, decreased coordination, convulsions or seizures
- Vomits repeatedly
- Has slurred speech or unusual behavior
- Has one pupil larger than the other
- Cannot recognize people or places, or becomes confused, restless or agitated
- Loses consciousness, looks very drowsy, or cannot be woken up
For a child, all of the above apply, and the CDC adds two danger signs specific to infants and toddlers: the child will not stop crying and cannot be consoled, or will not nurse or eat. Those exist because a baby cannot tell you their head hurts. A toddler who is inconsolable after a fall is not a wait-and-see situation.
The Concussion Recognition Tool 6 lists a similar set of red flags calling for an ambulance, and adds two the CDC list does not spell out: neck pain or tenderness, and any visible deformity of the skull. Neck pain matters because the neck may be injured too, so do not move the person unnecessarily.
None of this depends on whether the person blacked out. Most concussions involve no loss of consciousness at all.
Can you test for a concussion at home?
No — and it is worth understanding why, because the reason changes what you should do instead.
A concussion is a functional injury. It usually does not show up on a CT scan, there is no home blood test for it, and its symptoms overlap with things that are not concussion: neck strain, dehydration, migraine, a bad night's sleep. Sorting that out requires an examination. The Living Guideline for Pediatric Concussion Care recommends that anyone with a suspected concussion be assessed by a physician or nurse practitioner, specifically to exclude more severe injuries and to work through the differential — not just to confirm the obvious.
So the honest framing is this: at home you are recognizing, not testing. Recognition is a real skill with a real tool behind it, and it is the step most often skipped.
A normal result on anything you do at home does not mean there is no concussion. Symptoms can be absent early and appear later — our guide on how long after hitting your head concussion symptoms can start covers that delay. Someone who passes every question in the first ten minutes can be clearly concussed by bedtime.
What is the Concussion Recognition Tool, and can I use it?
Yes. The Concussion Recognition Tool 6 (CRT6) is the one instrument in this field that was written for you. It came out of the 6th International Conference on Concussion in Sport, alongside the Amsterdam consensus statement on concussion in sport, and the Concussion in Sport Group describes the CRT as the tool for the layperson while the SCAT and SCOAT tools are restricted to healthcare professionals.
The CRT6 is explicitly designed for non-medically trained individuals, and explicitly not designed to diagnose concussion. It runs through four things in order: red flags that mean an ambulance, observable signs (lying motionless, unsteadiness, a blank look, facial injury), the symptoms the person reports, and simple memory questions about the situation.
Its output is not a diagnosis or a score but a decision: is a concussion suspected, yes or no. If yes, the person comes out and gets assessed. That is the whole design.
Two instructions on the tool matter as much as the checklist. A person with a suspected concussion should not be left alone in the hours after the injury, and should not drive until a healthcare professional has cleared them.
Does the athlete need to come off the field?
If you are asking the question, the answer is yes.
The CDC is unambiguous: if an athlete shows any signs or symptoms of concussion, remove them from play right away and keep them out the same day of the injury, until cleared by a healthcare provider. The pediatric living guideline puts the same rule in four words — if in doubt, sit them out — and adds that the child should not return to sport or other physical activity that day.
Nothing in this guide, and nothing you can do at home, is clearance to go back in. A checklist that comes back clean is not a green light. Symptoms improving over twenty minutes is not a green light. Only a clinician, working through a graded protocol, ends the sit-out.
What is SCAT6, and why can't I use it at home?
SCAT6 is the sideline assessment you have seen a team doctor using: orientation questions, a symptom scale, word-list memory, digits backwards, a balance exam, a neurological screen. It is more sensitive than a casual conversation. It is also not for you.
The tool itself says so. SCAT6 states that it is designed for use by healthcare professionals, and directs anyone who is not one to the CRT6 instead. It also carries a warning that applies to every method in this article: the SCAT6 should not be used by itself to make, or to exclude, the diagnosis of concussion, because an athlete can have a concussion despite normal SCAT6 scores.
It has a shelf life, too. SCAT6 is intended for the acute period — ideally within 72 hours and up to 7 days after injury; after that, clinicians switch to the office version, SCOAT6. Much of it depends on comparison against a baseline and on scoring conventions that take training to apply. Run yourself from a downloaded PDF, it produces a number that means nothing — and the risk is that a falsely reassuring number stops you seeking care.
How do you track symptoms at home in a way that helps?
This is the genuinely useful home task, and almost nobody does it.
The Post-Concussion Symptom Scale (PCSS) is the standard instrument. It is a 22-symptom scale that grades each symptom from 0 (not present) to 6 (severe). The same 22 symptoms sit inside SCAT6, where the maximum symptom severity score is 132. Our full concussion symptom guide lists the items and the four groups they fall into.
Score it once a day, at roughly the same time, and write down what the person was doing when each symptom got worse. Reading? A car ride? Twenty minutes of screens? That pattern is the most useful thing you can hand a clinician, and it is what shapes treatment.
Be clear about what the score is and is not. It tracks a known injury over time. It does not diagnose one. And on the other end of recovery, the Amsterdam pediatric recommendations state that no tests or measures other than standardized, validated symptom rating scales are valid for diagnosing persisting symptoms after concussion — the scale is the evidence base, not the gadget.
For young children who cannot rate their own symptoms, score behavior instead: crying, feeding, sleep, balance, play. Our guide to concussion symptoms in kids and toddlers covers what to watch for by age.
Do you have to wake someone every hour through the night?
No. This is the most persistent piece of bad concussion advice in circulation, and it comes from a misunderstanding — the fear that falling asleep causes a coma.
As the Cleveland Clinic puts it, there is no evidence that waking someone with a suspected concussion is needed or beneficial, and a full night's sleep does more good than hourly rousing. Australia's Royal Children's Hospital says the same thing to parents: continue your child's normal sleep routine, and there is no need to wake them during the night unless a doctor has told you to.
Guidance is not perfectly uniform on this. MedlinePlus still suggests parents may want to briefly check a child every two or three hours for the first 12 hours, asking a simple question and looking for changes. If a clinician has given you specific instructions, follow theirs.
What everyone agrees on is the underlying point: the reason to check is the danger signs list at the top of this page. An adult or child who is unusually drowsy, cannot be woken, is breathing abnormally, or is vomiting repeatedly needs emergency care — not a check-in schedule.
What should the first 48 hours look like?
Not a dark room. Strict rest has been replaced. The Amsterdam consensus recommendations state that rather than strict rest, early return to light physical activity and reduced screen time facilitate recovery. Gentle walking that does not clearly worsen symptoms is fine. Anything risking a second impact is not.
Screens are the part with a trial behind them. In a randomized trial of 125 patients aged 12 to 25, those asked to abstain from screen time for 48 hours had a median recovery of 3.5 days versus 8.0 days in the group permitted screens. It is a single-center study and the authors called for multicenter confirmation, but it is the best direct evidence available, and cutting screens for two days costs nothing.
Our guide to concussion treatment covers what comes after those first two days, including the graded return to activity.
Do concussion apps and home devices work?
Honestly: not as diagnostic tests, and not on their own.
The FDA issued a 2019 safety communication warning against devices not cleared for the assessment, diagnosis or management of head injury, and notes that even FDA-cleared devices may not correctly diagnose a brain injury if used alone without other testing managed by a provider.
Take the best-studied sideline test as a benchmark. A Journal of Athletic Training study of the King-Devick rapid number-naming test found acceptable discrimination in the first 48 hours but only 41% specificity at an 80% sensitivity threshold, concluding it should not be used as a standalone assessment at any time point. That is a validated, baseline-anchored test performing modestly. A consumer app with no baseline is not doing better.
Balance-sensing apps and wearables sit in a similar place. A systematic review of inertial sensor systems for postural control found most clinical studies used small samples, were of low quality, and varied widely in protocol, and called for large prospective studies before a clinical role could be established.
The genuinely useful apps are the boring ones: a symptom diary that reminds you to score the PCSS daily. That is data collection, not diagnosis, and it is worth doing.
When should you be seen, and by whom?
If there are no danger signs, the standard is still to be seen. The CDC states that people with a mild TBI or concussion need to be seen by a healthcare provider, and to make contact as soon as they can, because getting care early can speed recovery.
Go sooner if the injured person is a young child, is on a blood thinner, has had a previous concussion, or has symptoms getting worse rather than settling. Schools and leagues generally require written clearance before return to play anyway, so the appointment is happening either way.
Who you see depends on what is driving the symptoms. Dizziness and balance point one way, reading and screen intolerance another, mood and sleep another again. Our guide to choosing the right concussion specialist maps symptom patterns to the clinician trained for them.
Bring three things: what happened, whether any danger signs appeared, and your daily symptom scores. That turns a vague account into something a clinician can act on in ten minutes. You can search our directory by service, state and city for concussion clinics, neurologists, vestibular therapists and neuro-optometrists near you — every listing is verified against the provider's own public website, inclusion is free, and nothing is ranked by payment.
Find a concussion specialist near you
Search 3,205 verified concussion clinics and specialists across all 50 states — filter by services like vestibular therapy, vision therapy, and neuropsychology.
Browse the largest state directories: California (148) · South Carolina (136) · Pennsylvania (125).
Not sure which kind of specialist your symptoms point to? Take the 2-minute specialist quiz →
Frequently asked questions
Is there a concussion test you can do at home?
No. No at-home test can diagnose a concussion or rule one out, and the FDA has not approved any device that can assess or diagnose a brain injury without an evaluation by a health care provider. What you can do at home is recognize the signs, check for emergency danger signs, and track symptoms on a validated scale so a clinician has real data to work from.
What are the danger signs that mean going to the emergency room?
The CDC says to call 911 or go to the emergency department for a headache that gets worse and does not go away, weakness or numbness or decreased coordination, convulsions or seizures, repeated vomiting, slurred speech or unusual behavior, one pupil larger than the other, not recognizing people or places, or losing consciousness, looking very drowsy or being unable to be woken. For infants and toddlers, the CDC adds crying that will not stop and cannot be consoled, and refusing to nurse or eat.
What is the Concussion Recognition Tool 6, and can a parent or coach use it?
Yes — the CRT6 is the one tool in this field designed for non-medically trained people. It steps through red flags, observable signs, reported symptoms and simple memory questions. It is explicitly not designed to diagnose concussion. Its output is a decision, not a score: if a concussion is suspected, the person comes out of the activity and gets assessed.
Can I use SCAT6 at home?
No. SCAT6 states that it is designed for use by healthcare professionals and directs anyone else to the CRT6 instead. It also warns that it should not be used by itself to make or exclude a concussion diagnosis, because an athlete can be concussed despite normal SCAT6 scores. Scoring it yourself from a downloaded PDF produces a number that means nothing and risks falsely reassuring you.
Do you need to wake someone every hour after a concussion?
Generally no. The Cleveland Clinic notes there is no evidence that waking someone with a suspected concussion is needed or beneficial, and Australia's Royal Children's Hospital tells parents to keep the normal sleep routine with no need to wake the child unless a doctor has said otherwise. MedlinePlus still suggests a brief check every two or three hours for the first 12 hours in children, so follow any specific instructions your clinician gives you. The real trigger for action is the danger signs list, not a waking schedule.
Do concussion apps and home devices actually work?
Not as diagnostic tests. The FDA issued a 2019 safety communication warning against devices not cleared for assessing, diagnosing or managing head injury, and notes that even cleared devices may not diagnose correctly if used alone. Even the well-studied King-Devick test showed only 41% specificity at an 80% sensitivity threshold in one Journal of Athletic Training study, and the authors concluded it should not be used as a standalone assessment. A daily symptom diary is the app worth having.
Educational content only — not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Reviewed by Jon MacKay, PharmD, BCACP against current clinical guidance; last updated August 2026.