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Case Series Illustrating the Use of Consistent Rehabilitation Outcome Measures in Traumatic Brain Injury
| Jan Perkins1*, Ksenia I Ustinova1and Chris Hausbeck2 | |
| 1Graduate Program in Physical Therapy, Central Michigan University, Mt Pleasant, MI, USA | |
| 2Hope Network Rehabilitation Services, Mt Pleasant, Michigan, USA | |
| Corresponding Author : | Jan Perkins Graduate Program in Physical Therapy Central Michigan University Mt Pleasant, MI, USA Tel: 989-774-1297 Fax: 989-774-2433 E-mail: jan.perkins@cmich.edu |
| Received August 08, 2013; Accepted August 24, 2013; Published August 27, 2013 | |
| Citation: Perkins J, Ustinova KI, Hausbeck C (2013) Case Series Illustrating the Use of Consistent Rehabilitation Outcome Measures in Traumatic Brain Injury. J Nov Physiother 3:177. doi:10.4172/2165-7025.1000177 | |
| Copyright: © 2013 Perkins J, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. | |
Abstract
Despite the prevalence of persons with traumatic brain injury (TBI), there is limited research evidence on rehabilitation outcomes for this population or therapy efficacy, making it difficult to document overall program outcomes. This may in part be due to the heterogeneity of the condition presentation, therapist and center treatment variability, and the expert recommendations for multidisciplinary care which complicates research design. A different approach may be to accept the heterogeneity of the population and gather consistent outcome data. A set of consistent measures used across the population may allow individual clinicians, managers and researchers to track therapy efficacy and over time improve management of this unique client population. This case series reports on the first three clients seen in one outpatient rehabilitation clinic where a consistent set of simple but clinically relevant physical rehabilitation outcome measures were added to therapy at evaluation and after every ten subsequent sessions. Measures selected were chosen to document key movement impairments and quality of life issues after TBI, yet be simple enough for use in routine clinical practice. Despite the considerable variation in client presentation (time since injury, age, clinical presentation) these measures were able to track improvement for each client. It is proposed that clinicians develop a standard battery of easily administered, functionally relevant outcome measures that can be used to study the effects of individualized therapies on this diverse population.
