Outcome of intensive rehabilitation after severe brain injury: a long-term follow-up study

Abstract

Fifty-five brain-injured adults (of 64 discharged) were followed up from 19 to 101 months after discharge from a rehabilitation unit. Change was assessed in terms of discharge and current placement, as compared with pre-admission placement. The results demonstrate that rehabilitation achieved improvements in functional skills and social behaviour that lastingly affected the type of placement possible, and thus improved quality of life. In most cases where improvements were seen during rehabilitation, further improvements occurred after discharge. The findings also have implications for the timing of rehabilitation and for discharge and resettlement planning.

Cost-benefits associated with social outcome from neurobehavioural rehabilitation

“…Eames et al [40] later reported similar outcomes with another cohort of severely disturbed individuals, demonstrating that improved social functioning could result in changes in accommodation status when assessed an average of 5 years post-discharge. Interestingly, amongst this group of 64 patients, only 26 were considered to have completed their rehabilitation by their date of discharge and 17 had funding withdrawn.…”

“…In contrast to earlier research [40][41][42] the intention was to undertake a prospective study, collecting data as people progressed through their rehabilitation and after discharge. This included observations of psychological, functional and behavioural characteristics.…”

Efficacy of rehabilitation for functional skills more than 10 years after extremely severe brain injury

“…There is some evidence suggesting that changes continue to occur more than 10 years after severe brain injury in the absence of intervention, sometimes for the better (McMillan & Herbert, 2004;Sbordone et al, 1995) and sometimes for the worse (Thomsen, 1992). Eames, Cotterill, Kneale, Storrar, and Yeomans (1995) describe a case where a patient admitted 13 years after injury made significant physical and functional gains during 7 months of rehabilitation. Wood, McCrea, Wood, and Merriman (1999) found that neurobehavioural rehabilitation still produced positive changes in patients more than 5 years post-injury although the changes were not as great as for those receiving rehabilitation sooner after injury.…”

Long-term neuropsychological performance in a cohort of children and adolescents after severe paediatric traumatic brain injury

“…Rehabilitation services for TBI increase, but few data exist with respect to the long-term cognitive performance in a paediatric rehabilitation population. Most studies investigated functional outcome after rehabilitation in an adult TBI population [20][21][22][23][24]. The few studies that were performed in children who received rehabilitation had broad inclusion criteria [25].…”